Haven
by Phex Sev'laya
Summary: An ODST stranded on Reach during its final battles, desperately fighting to deny the Covenant their prize. He'll need the help of a Spartan to make it out alive, but what happens once they're victorious? Will he be able to return to the UNSC without her, or will he find a new calling in life?
1. Chapter 1

_**PLEASE READ:** A/N: Hello all! To all returning readers, I would like to apologize but I finally made up my mind to change the main character's name. He is now Jason Blackwell (last name is unchanged). Should be correct throughout. If you liked it better the other way, let me know and I'll change it back. Sorry if it's a bit confusing, but if you don't mind it then please bear with me!_

 **Chapter 1**

 **2145 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar)/Epsilon Eridani System, Unknown Building, planet Reach**

The room had only three pieces of furniture, a large comfortable bed in the corner, a heavy antique table made of solid wood that sat by the door, and the solid wood antique chair to match it. The only man in the entire building was sitting up in the bed, leaning up against the headboard. Lance Corporal Jason Blackwell was getting ready to lay down for the night, having done far more work than any reasonable person could be expected to do in a day; at least that's what he was telling himself. _And dealt with a lot of shit that no one in a combat zone should have to deal with. There's no way that I'm coherent enough to do anything else today._

He rose from the bed and crossed to the door, checking to make sure that the deadbolt was securely locked. He then lifted the UNSC issued shotgun off the desk, slinging it across his back before slowly struggling to slide the heavy desk in front of the door. Once he had accomplished his task, he flipped off the dim light; completely ridding the room of the faint glow that he had allowed before.

He chinned a switch in his helmet, turning on the tactical light on the side. He turned to the bed, unslinging his shotgun as he approached it. He rested it against the wall with the assault rifle, the SMG, and his tactical pack, which all sat next to the bed. Once they were propped up against the wall, he removed his helmet and switched it to sentry mode so that it'd wake him if it detected anything unusual.

Removing his helmet also deactivated the experimental energy shield that had previously surrounded him. It was a spinoff of the hugely effective energy shield that the Spartans had. In addition, the experimental ODST armor was powered by generators that were powered by movement. So as long as he was moving, the suit was recharging the built in high capacity battery that powered his shields. Despite the new tech they had stuffed in this suit though, the MJOLNIR armor system could still take a thousand times more punishment than his could. He would rather be back in that armor any day of the week.

Once Jason had set his helmet down, he climbed into bed with the rest of his armor and his boots still on. He proceeded to drift towards sleep; safe in the knowledge that he was still lightly armed, having kept his combat knife and pistol on his chest and thigh respectively.

As he began closing his eyes to rest, Blackwell heard a drawn out creak from somewhere in the building that he was currently trying in vain to fall asleep in. _That's the building settling for the night; it's probably not nearly as stable as it was before the invasion._ He reasoned with himself. _But with my luck lately, there's no way that it's that._

This last thought compelled him to put sleeping off until later, and get back up now. He uncovered himself, throwing the blankets to the side. As Jason stood, he quietly picked his helmet up off of his pack, switching it from sentry to the HUD as he donned it. He decided to forgo turning on the helmet's light for now, instead choosing to use his helmet's night vision capabilities to navigate around the room. He picked up his pack, silently attaching it to the clasps that would turn it into an extension of his armor.

Once the bag was securely fastened, Jason reached down and retrieved his MA5C, choosing the assault rifle over the SMG due to the higher level of firepower and accuracy that it offered. He firmly affixed it to his back and attached its safety strap before he picked up his shotgun and attached its strap as well. Only then did he reach out to find the switch that would turn on the dim light, switching off his night vision as soon as he had located it.

As he flipped the switch, he heard another creak, this time just outside his door. Already, he was glad that he had decided to get back up after the first creak, and not after this one. His HUD was showing six tightly packed red dots on the other side of the door. If he were just getting up now, it would have been too late. He knew that some of the light from the bulb in the ceiling was shining underneath the door, but that didn't matter anymore. They had known that he was there as soon as they had set foot inside the building.

Jackals were ruthless killers. Once they overlapped their shields, they became a nearly unstoppable force to a regular marine, and a fairly challenging group of opponents to a well-armed and rested "special ODST" like himself. Unfortunately, Jason was only decently armed, and severely lacking in sleep. Fortunately for him, he had plenty of experience in dealing with Jackals in the field, and knew that they didn't switch on their shields until they could actually see a threat, because the shields could only run for a short time before having to be switched off to regenerate lost power. And at night, the light given off by the plasma barrier played hell with the night vision of everyone that could see it.

Jason quickly made up his mind and swapped weapons, affixing his shotgun to his back and retrieving his assault rifle, ensuring that there was a round in the chamber and checking to make sure that all the gun's stats matched what was displayed on his visor.

Jason crossed the room so that he was directly across from the door, noting that his mission camera was still rolling, and would be for several more weeks until it ran out of allotted storage space. He raised his rifle, pointing it at the center of the door, roughly at a Jackal's chest height.

"One, Two, Three, Four..."He stopped counting out loud, his helmet recognizing the voice command and bringing up a small stopwatch in the corner of his helmets screen.

The bastards were grouped up and approaching the door slowly; even better, the distinctive shimmer that indicated a forearm mounted plasma shield was turned on wasn't present on his radar. _Thank god for new tech,_ Blackwell thought, knowing that he only had one chance to do this right. _Of course, it would have been a lot easier if they had let me keep the Spartan armor after they trained us. But I guess a hefty dose of discretion was called for._

 _Twenty Eight, Twenty Nine, Thirty..._ Jason Blackwell squeezed the trigger and fanned his gun across the door, making sure to spray a wide enough area so as to hit all six of the targets evenly. Roughly three seconds later, the last 7.62 x 51 mm Full Metal Jacket Armor Piercing round in the magazine exited the barrel, succeeded in tearing off what was left of the top half of the door, and flattened harmlessly against the nearly undetectable energy shield of one of the six Special Operations Elites standing in the hallway outside Jason's room.

Jason had had a great deal of training when it came to the Sangheili warrior caste system, as had every Spartan 4 recruit, and so upon seeing his true targets, promptly calculated the different possible outcomes of his current situation.

The Elite in the forefront of the group held a plasma rifle, as did the two flanking him on either side. The one directly behind the leader held a plasma carbine and had a beam rifle strapped to his back. The other two held what looked like heavier versions of the plasma pistol, likely designed to be used in nearly any combat situation, and both had Fuel Rod Cannons on their backs. All six carried unlit plasma swords on their hips, ready to be pulled and cut him in half at a second's notice.

 _I could swap weapons, I might even be able to kill two or three of these bastards if I sidestep and use the shotgun point blank._ For the half second that he actually considered this to be a viable plan he was exceptionally confident about it, but that feeling rapidly dissipated, replaced with a feeling of uncertainty. _Probably because it's suicide, and that's not really something that's high up on my agenda today._

Jason Blackwell made up his mind. He pivoted on the balls of his feet, turning to the window. At the same time, he dropped his assault rifle, letting the strap do its job and halt his gun's fall before it hit the ground. As he began to sprint for the three foot by four foot window, Jason pulled his pistol out, taking aim at the reinforced window and hoping that the Semi-Armor Piercing Explosive rounds would be able to shatter the inch thick glass before he got there.

It took him a total of two seconds to reach the window, by which time Jason was able to fire seven rounds from his pistol. This had the desired effect of heavily cracking the supposedly shatterproof window. He threw himself forward, relying on his body mass to shatter the glass. He was lucky; the window shattered, sending him plummeting downward just as the six Special Operations Sangheili were entering the room and turning towards him.

As he fell, Jason tried to aim for a burned out car that he hoped would break his fall. He managed to hit it hard, crumpling the hood and rolling off onto the ground, where he stayed for several moments. He heard yelling from above him, but he didn't look up.

The Elites made it to the window. _They probably let the sniper go first so he could shoot me if I survived the landing._ This thought sufficiently motivated Jason to get up from where he had been bent over on his hands and knees and to start running.

As Jason sprinted towards an alleyway across the street, bright green bolts of plasma began raining down around him, confirming his theory that the sniper would be allowed to get to the window first. Several of them hit, almost completely draining his shields before he was halfway to the alley. He holstered his pistol and reloaded his assault rifle as he ran. There was a brief pause in the shooting. _He must be reloading. That could give me the half a second that I need to make it to safety._

He was wrong. Half a step before he reached the safety of the alley, a bright blue beam of plasma impacted Jason Blackwell's left shoulder. It smashed its way through the rest of his shields and punched a neat half inch wide hole through his armor, muscle, bone, muscle, and finally armor again before melting a hole in the concrete to Jason's left, having cauterized everything it touched on the way.

Jason screamed and fell, clutching his shoulder as he tumbled into the safety of the alley, crawling several meters in to ensure that he could no longer be seen. As he lay out of the sniper's line of fire, Jason tried to figure out what to do. _I can't stay here… I have to move, get away. But… it's kinda nice here… it's dark and I'm tired. I could just sleep_. Jason started drifting off, the wound in his shoulder bothering him less and less with each passing second.

Jason heard six consecutive thumps from back in the direction of the room that he had resided in for a few hours. _That was probably the Elites jumping down from the window. I bet they're hunting me, trying to kill all the evil humans on the planet._ But Jason Blackwell found that he was caring less and less about them as he drifted off.

His eyes were nearly closed when the six Elites rounded the corner and began moving towards him. He didn't care, they were still a few meters away, and he would be asleep by the time they reached him. They closed to fifteen feet.

Two giant figures emerged from the shadows immediately to his right, moving towards him at a rapid pace. He couldn't make out what they were, but they were clearly massive; nearly as tall as the Elites were, and even more well-built. They captured his attention, causing him to perk up slightly. As the one in the lead stepped over his outstretched legs, he realized what they were. Both Spartans had assault rifles on their backs and pistols on their thighs. The one in the lead carried a sniper rifle, and Jason's muddled and distracted brain told him that it looked familiar. He leveled it at the Six Elites, who roared and angled towards these new, worthier opponents.

The two Spartans were tagged in Jason's HUD. The one with the Sniper was labeled as S-005, and the one behind him was S-137. The latter crouched over Jason, shielding him from a stray plasma bolt that had been directed at S-005. The Spartan squatting above him pulled a stim form one of its armor's compartments, injecting it into Jason's thigh.

Almost immediately, Jason felt himself becoming more alert. His vision was restored just in time to watch all six Elites open fire on S-005. Jason could see the shimmer as the Spartan's shields absorbed and dissipated as much of the plasma as they could, but they were draining quickly. While the Elites continued to fire, the Spartan's sniper rifle cracked four times in rapid succession, the last round exiting the barrel before the shell casing from the first had made it to the ground.

Four shots had been fired, and all four found their mark. Four of the six Elites now lay on the ground, all four missing enormous chunks of their heads. But now the Spartan would have to reload, and it was obvious even to Jason that he wasn't going to make it. The Elites had completely drained S-005's shields, and the only thing that had saved him was that the two remaining elites had had to let their weapons cool down.

The Spartan crouching over Jason was spraying bio-foam in his wound, but he wasn't paying attention. He watched as the lead Spartan dropped his rifle and pulled an unnecessarily large looking knife from its sheath. He lunged with amazing speed, jumping clean over both of the Elite's heads and twisting so that he landed on his feet behind them, facing Jason.

The Spartan grasped the neck of the closest Elite and pulled him backwards, forcing his knife deep into his back, right where the shield didn't cover. The blade protruded out of the Elite's chest, dripping with the alien's vividly purple blood. The Special Operations Trooper died instantly, the Spartan's knife having pierced several vital internal organs.

By then, the last Elite left standing had turned towards where his comrade was skewered on the Spartan's knife and raised his weapon.

S-005 wasn't going to make it. The Elite's weapon was raised and the Spartan's only unoccupied weapon was on his back. But to reach it, he would have to drop the Elite that he was using as a shield. He hesitated.

The Elite started firing, pouring as many plasma rounds down range as he could. S-005 ducked behind the Elite's corpse, but the plasma was beginning to burn its way through.

Jason suddenly realized that there was a rifle, his own, resting in his lap; fully loaded and angled towards S-005 and the Elite. He steadied the weapon, making sure that the targeting reticule on his HUD was lined up with the middle of the Elite's back.

Jason squeezed the trigger, taking pride in his ability to hold the gun steady, despite the awkward angle, and ensure that nearly all of the armor piercing rounds found their way into the Elite's back, killing him before his plasma burned all the way through his dead ally. The Spartan withdrew his knife from the Elite's back and wiped it off on its armor before approaching Jason and S-137. Both registered as Petty Officer 2nd Class on his HUD, meaning that in a combat situation such as this one, they far outranked him.

Jason attempted to raise his right hand in a salute, but couldn't raise it high enough.

"On your feet soldier, we'll get you somewhere you can rest." S-005 said. "We're going to need all the help we can get."

Jason struggled to his feet with the help of the two juggernauts, both gently pulling him to his feet before helping him work his way back towards the entrance to the alley.

They ruled out his old building almost immediately, since it had already been visited once, and likely would be again when the team didn't report in.

"They're working their way from North to South." S-005 said. "We're better off finding a building towards the North that they've already swept."

They found one such building within two miles and they deemed it a good place to rest up. S-137 quickly swept the small building for Covenant troops and, upon finding it empty, found a room with a bed. That's where they took Jason, laying him down on the bed to rest after they reapplied bio-foam and a bandage.

Jason didn't even try to refuse; he just removed the necessary armor components to avoid aggravating his wound, and slept.

He awoke roughly twelve hours later with a stabbing pain in his left shoulder. He was alone; the two Spartans that he vaguely remembered from the night before were nowhere to be seen.

As he stood up and looked around, Jason heard the sound of a bolt being cycled from down the hall. Relieved that he wasn't alone, Jason donned his helmet and as much of his armor as he could, and retrieved his weapons from where they were neatly laid out on the floor before setting off down the hallway on search of whomever made the noise he had heard.

He was still painfully aware of the hole in his shoulder, but tried not to let it slow him down too much as he swept through the small apartment. It didn't take Jason long to find the two Spartans. They had set up shop in the living room, laying out all of their various armaments in neat rows on the floor. As Jason approached his two companions, he began noticing things that he had missed the night before.

Jason noticed that his HUD had tagged both of them, enabling him to discriminate between the two. The one that had done all of the fighting the night before, S-005, was a male. His armor was looking a little worse for wear, being covered in scratches, dents, and plasma burns. He was busy fiddling with a component inside his helmet, and didn't look up when Jason entered the room.

The other Spartan was a female, and while her armor appeared to be far less damaged, it was not unscathed and she appeared to be in the process of making some minor adjustments. She was extremely tall. _But then again,_ he thought, _they all are, it gives them the upper hand in almost any fight_. In addition to being tall, the female Spartan was also ridiculously attractive. Her short, jet black hair was in sharp contrast to her almost unnaturally pale skin, but also drew his attention to her piercing blue eyes. Blue eyes that he now realized were staring at him.

Jason quickly looked away, fearing that she could somehow see through his black reflective visor and would know what he was thinking. So instead of looking over at her again, he studied the other Spartan. He had short brown hair, brown eyes, very pale skin, and was also unusually tall. It was only now that Jason noticed that both Spartan's rank was displayed along with their ID when he looked at them, and then proceeded to remember that they both thoroughly outranked him.

He snapped to attention and saluted.

"At ease soldier," S-005 said. Jason relaxed slightly, dropping his hand to his side and approaching the two Spartans.

"Orders sir?" Jason asked, hoping that it wasn't anything too strenuous because of the state his shoulder was in.

"For now, check your armor and see what kind of shape it's in, then clean your weapons. How's your shoulder feeling?"

Jason almost told them that it was fine so they wouldn't be concerned, but that could prove dangerous if they thought he was fine in a fight. He could get them all killed if he lied.

"It hurts sir. I'm not at full fighting capacity."

"Good, I would have been worried if you said you were fine. That would make you a liar and a liability. Get to work on your weapons and armor, work as fast as you can, but be thorough."

"Yes sir." Jason said, unloading his weapons and laying them out on the floor.

Once Jason's weapons were laid out, he disassembled his armor and began making minor repairs, mostly consisting of tightening straps and locking plates in place. They sat there in silence as they cleaned their weapons and armor. At one point, Jason rebandaged his shoulder. The verbal silence was deafening, and after about twenty minutes, Jason felt like he had to speak up.

"We're going to be stuck together in this city for a while," he said. "We might as well learn each other's names."

"That's a fair point," S-137 said, she looked as S-005 and he nodded. She turned back to Jason. "I'm Carris."

"James," said the other Spartan.

"I'm Jason," he said. "So what's our plan?"

"The city is lost, any civilians that were here at some point have either been evacuated, or killed by the Covenant," Carris said. "But there's something here, something the Covenant wants."

"How do you know?" Jason asked.

"Because we're still alive," James said slightly bitterly. "If there wasn't something here then the Covenant would have glassed the days ago."

""Well what is it?" Jason asked.

"No idea," Carris said, "But that's our new mission. We have to stop the Covenant from claiming it as theirs. Comms are blocked, so we're on our own for now."

"How long do we have?"

"From the Covenant chatter that I've heard, they've already found it, and they're convinced that it could win them the war. It's going to take them some time to get to it, even though they've found it already, but we only have a week at most before they're able to take it and go." James said.

"Then we had better get to work," Jason said, grimly returning to the task of cleaning his shotgun. As he worked, he thought back to what had happened to lead him to this twisted turn of events.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

 **1000 Hours, August 27, 2552 (Military Calendar)/Epsilon Eridani System, Single Occupant Exoatmospheric Insertion Vehicle, upper atmosphere of Reach**

"One minute until impact." Sergeant Major Ainsley Wyatt said. His pod, along with the two hundred others that contained every man and woman in his Company, was currently hurtling towards the ground at terminal velocity. As per protocol, he had been the first to launch. That way, he would be the first one down, and there would be a senior commanding officer on the ground when the rest of the men landed. It was always best to have a chain of command established as early as possible.

Someone popped a disk into a slot in their pod and the ODST anthem began playing over the loudspeakers of all two hundred pods. The unauthorized usage of UNSC Comms systems during battle was strictly frowned upon. This, however, was not exactly unusual, and in fact was nearly universally welcomed.

"Forty five seconds out," Wyatt said. He knew that his thrusters should be activating soon so that he could slow his descent. Otherwise he'd hit the ground at terminal velocity and his pod would dig itself into the ground. The rigid Titanium-A frame would keep the pod in one piece, but Ainsley would be killed instantly.

 _I suppose the operation wouldn't be a complete disaster, but the company would lose a lot of sensitive equipment, the AI, and their most senior ranked commander. Though Spalding is a very competent leader, he could rally the men together nearly as well as I could._

Still, it wasn't something that required his attention at the moment; only something to ponder occasionally on the way down, his pod still hadn't reached the stage that the thrusters should deploy at. He checked the clock again, seeing that there were still forty seconds left until impact and deployment, an eternity in drop time.

He checked his straps again, ensuring that they were securely fastened. It would be awful if he came out of his seat when the thrusters deployed. His head would slam up against the sides of his pod, and he wouldn't last more than a few hits. His straps were secure.

"Wilhelm, give me a countdown until thruster deployment." Wyatt requested, knowing that the Company's AI would give him a quick answer.

"Sir," Wilhelm said, speaking up for the first time since the pods had launched. He spoke slowly and carefully, clearly not wanting to rush whatever it was that he had to say. There was an undertone to his voice that made Ainsley distinctly uncomfortable. "It appears as if your pod is not responding at the moment. Unless I am able to get through to it in the next few seconds, there will be no thruster deployment. It has been a pleasure serving with you over the last three years." Both Wyatt and Wilhelm were quiet for several seconds after this announcement.

"You too Wilhelm," Wyatt whispered slowly when he had regained the ability to speak.

Wyatt's timer said thirty three seconds until impact, but time had begun to slow for him.

"Thirty seconds," Wyatt said automatically over the Company's Comms when the counter reached that point. His voice was hushed. "It appears as if my pod has stopped responding. My thrusters won't be deploying on this drop. It's been a pleasure serving with you."

Silence echoed through his pod. The anthem continued to play, but the sound faded to the back of his consciousness. The rattling of his pod as it rushed through Reach's atmosphere faded away from his attention, leaving him in perceived silence.

"Sir, it's been a pleasure to serve with you," said one of the ODSTs in Wyatt's company. Before he had finished speaking, the rest of the Helljumpers riding down with him began echoing heartfelt variants of this message.

Ainsley Wyatt knew that most men started screaming before their pods hit the ground. Some prayed, making peace with their God, some cried for their mothers, some begged God, any God, to save them with a miracle, but that wasn't how he wanted to die. _I don't want to be remembered as dying while I'm crying for my mother._

He pulled out to heavy stims, knowing that there would be just enough time for them to take effect in the twenty or so seconds that he had. He stabbed them into his thigh, and several seconds later he was launched into a high like he'd never felt before. It was so distracting that he lost focus of the passage of time, and forgot to watch the timer that spelled out the rest of time that he had to live. In fact, he had even managed to forget that he was going to die soon. His death was instantaneous, and in his last seconds, he lost awareness that it was coming.

. . .

Jason Blackwell's pod was towards the middle of the pack, but with the assistance of the camera on the bottom of his Single Occupant Exoatmospheric Insertion Vehicle, and the monitor in front of him, he could see his commander's pod as it impacted the ground.

His thrusters had activated, and his descent was slowed significantly, allowing him to hit the ground far less violently than Wyatt had.

When Jason's pod landed, the front hatch slid up and over the top of the pod just like it was supposed to, and Jason wasted no time in unstrapping and grabbing his weapons. He slung his custom SRS99D-S2 AM sniper rifle on his back and grasped his Silenced SMG, making sure that he had as many magazines for both as he could carry.

"Blackwell," Master Sergeant Spalding shouted at him.

"Yes sir," Jason replied, snapping to attention.

"I want you and Cohen on top of that three story building at the end of the street," he said, gesturing towards where the road dead-ended into a perpendicular road.

"Roger Sir!" Jason said, saluting before placing his weapons back in the SOEIV and strapping himself back in. Once he was strapped in he pressed the hatch release, causing the front hatch to slide back down. He used the thrusters and the reserve fuel tank to guide himself back into the air and on top of the building he had been assigned to. His spotter, Cohen, landed nearby just a few seconds after he did.

Jason Blackwell's 'spotter' was the same rank as he was, but it was understood that Jason was the one that took the lead in most situations. They'd been friends since their first days at the academy. They'd served together for years, even before they were accepted by the ODSTs.

Usually, the better shooter served as the spotter, due to the increased level of experience required for the task. But as Jason and his 'spotter', Alexander Cohen, were equals when it came to shooting, Jason had suggested early on that they swap out every now and then so that they were both just as good at spotting as they were at shooting.

"Who's spotting today?" Alex asked as he sauntered over to Jason, Rifle in hand.

"No one," Jason told him. "This'll be a target rich environment, so we're both going to need rifles."

"Hell yeah!" Alex said, grabbing the rifle out of his pod.

"Just make sure to call out your targets so neither of us wastes a round!" Jason said as he slung his SMG on his back and grabbed extra boxes of ammunition for his sniper rifle.

The two friends took up positions next to each other on the rooftop, leaving about five feet of space between them to allow for a wider range of motion.

"Snipers are in position sir!" Jason told Spalding through the Company's Comm frequency.

"Good! All right boys, the Covenant are two streets away, that gives us about five minutes to dig in and get ready. I want mines scattered on the streets and any open ground between us and them."

The ODSTs had done this countless times before, and didn't need any further instruction. They knew that they needed to get off the street as soon as possible. The covenant would likely have Wraiths and Ghosts; vehicles that were nearly impossible to take down when you were at their level.

It took three minutes to lay out over one hundred LOTUS Anti-Tank and various Anti-Personnel mines on the street in the direction that the Covenant would be coming from. After that, the company dug in and waited.

It took the Covenant longer than they had anticipated to show up, but when they did they came in force. The first to arrive were the Grunts. Individually, they were nothing more than an annoyance, but the seventy five grunts that came running down the street provided a very serious threat. They also foreshadowed the scale of the battle that was to come.

"Don't waste your shots on Grunts unless you need to pick one off that's posing a serious threat. We don't want to give ourselves away too quickly." Jason said.

Just as he said that, a Grunt started sprinting towards where Sergeant Spalding was crouched down behind an abandoned car. The Grunt held a lit plasma grenade in each hand and Jason knew from personal experience that he was probably screaming as well. He saw that Sergeant Spalding hadn't seen this new threat, and knew that he had to act quickly to save what little command structure was left.

His specialized scope informed him that the grunt was 40 meters away and that there was a stiff wind rolling up the street between the two of them. He adjusted his aim accordingly and gently squeezed the trigger.

The pressure wave generated by the 12.7 mm round caused the Grunt's head to explode, and completely severed the line to his methane tank. The grenades dropped to the ground where they stuck, causing their timers to begin counting down from three. When the two grenades detonated, the heat ignited the methane leaking out of the dead Grunt's broken methane pack. The slightly delayed methane explosion killed three grunts, on top of an additional four that had been killed during the detonation of the grenades.

"Good shot," Alex remarked, "They know where we are."

"The shot was justified. They would have killed him."

"True. Think we should change locations?"

"No. Anything that was able to tell where the shot came from died in the explosion."

"Good point. Looks like the Jackals are starting to show up. Watch for snipers gunning for the Company."

"You keep your eyes out for anything threatening the Company, I'll watch for anything that's gunning for us."

"Got it," Alex replied, shifting slightly to. "Keep in mind that the Jackals will spot us after a couple shots. "

"Then we had better make 'em count."

They both knew that as soon as the Covenant figured out where they were, it would be an all-out battle for survival as every Covenant soldier down there tried to kill them as fast as possible. An enemy sniper was the most hated person on the battlefield.

They watched the battle rage below them between the Company of Helljumpers, the Jackals, and the very few grunts that had managed to keep themselves alive this long. For the most part, the ODSTs were winning. There were a few casualties here and there, but they were mostly due to the occasional plasma grenade that was thrown well enough to kill one of the very well spread out Helljumpers.

When the Jackals had begun to pour out onto the street, there were easily over a hundred of them. Now, there were still over seventy five, and it had been nearly twenty minutes of exchanging fire with them.

"Ordnance," Sergeant Spalding called out through the Company channel. "Arm Anti-Personnel mines one through twenty five."

When the street had been mined, the Explosive Ordnance squad had laid out twenty five LOTUS Anti-Tank mines and seventy five Anti-Personnel mines. They had left them all disarmed to avoid wasting them on Grunts as the Covenant higher-ups had hoped that they would.

Now, however, they armed a third of the seventy five Anti-Personnel mines that littered the battleground below. The street had been swarming with Jackals and littered with dead Grunts before the mines had detonated. Their shields had been used with the typical scary efficiency, preventing the majority of the Helljumpers' shots from reaching their intended targets.

The twenty five mines that they armed were scattered evenly across what had previously been a highway with eight lanes of traffic before the invasion. When the mines were activated, they were all triggered nearly instantly. Each mine was made up of a proximity sensor, a blasting cap, a high explosive, and an outer shell that was designed to fracture into thousands of tiny pieces and get thrown upward and outward at several thousand kilometers an hour.

The shrapnel filled the air, shredding through the thick skin of the Jackals like a hot steak knife through butter. The dark purple blood of the Jackals and the bright blue blood of the dead grunts that littered the road filled the air in a slightly gross yet satisfying mist that was blown around in the slow wind drifting up the street, coating everything in sight. The beautiful purple and blue coating completely masked the horrors of the battlefield.

Silence descended over the street. Nothing moved, nothing twitched, and no one spoke. The street level ODSTs reloaded in near silence, the only noise was the sound of fresh magazines being quietly slid into weapons, no one wanting to disturb the blissful peace.

"That," Alex whispered over the Company's open Comm channel, "Was beautiful."

The channel erupted into laughter as the post-battle adrenaline wore off, leaving them giddy and calm. They laughed about it now, but if Jason didn't know that it was the bodies of a couple hundred Covenant soldiers that had created the appearance of this royal purple and neon blue highway, he would, without a doubt, have said that it was beautiful.

"Alright men, move out." Sergeant Spalding said, "Ordnance, recover the mines and distribute them. We'll want to keep as many as we can. Everybody refill your ammo in your pods. We're taking this city back street by street."

"Hell yeah!" several of the men on the ground yelled.

"It's about damn time we took this fight to the Covenant," Jason quietly remarked, receiving another wave of cheers.

The Helljumpers began stepping out on the street. The men in Ordnance were collecting the remaining mines and passing them out. Within five minutes, the company was divided up into five platoons on the street and was preparing to push for the heart of the city.

Jason got up and started jogging back to his pod. The rooftop was large, and he wanted to make sure he had all the ammo that he could carry. Alex hadn't fired a shot yet, so he wouldn't need to go back for ammunition. He had left Alex there knowing that he would be watching over the Company while they readied themselves for deployment.

Jason Blackwell reached his pod, roughly 100 meters from the edge of the rooftop. He retrieved what he needed and turned around to face Alex again, beginning the short jog back to the edge.

Alex saw them first; his specially enhanced eyesight picking out the figures before anyone else could. He yelled out a warning to the Company. Who knew how long they had been there, waiting for the Helljumpers to let down their guard. They should have shown up on the motion sensors, but they weren't moving. Jason was amazed that Alex had even seen them, Jason switched his visor's view to Alex's helmet cam and saw that they were covered in the same purple and blue war paint that everything else was. They must have moved in after the detonations, when their eyesight had been inhibited.

"Wraiths!" Alex repeated, yelling over the open Comm channel. There had been no reaction from the Company yet, but Jason could see them starting to react. He was still on his way back to Alex, able to do nothing but watch through the live helmet feed. Alex began to fire steadily, the booming of his sniper rifle echoing up and down the street.

The wraiths fired back.

Jason wasn't even halfway to Alex yet, but he was able to see at least a dozen Plasma Mortars sail high into the air in perfect arcs. Though they were all going to different places, they all seemed to originate from a fairly central location.

Alex kept reloading and pumping rounds into the enemy tanks as fast as he could. Jason kept running towards him. It was still too early to be able to tell where the mortars were going to go, and Jason could only hope that the rest of the Company was taking cover and preparing for another firefight.

Jason made it to the edge of the roof and laid back down, propping up his rifle on the ledge and looking through the scope. What he saw scared him more than anything he had ever seen before.

Alex's helmet had only shown four wraiths, but now Jason could see that over a dozen lined the street, all heavily coated in purple and blue blood. Alex had already managed to disable three of the alien tanks, but Jason knew that they took a full magazine to stop, and that was only if you were a good enough shot to his the main operator.

When the Wraiths fired their first salvo of Plasma Mortars, the Helljumpers were still congregated on the street where the majority of the fighting had occurred. There were over a dozen men carrying SPNKr rocket launchers in the crowd, but there were too many soldiers between them and the Wraiths for them to have a clear shot.

The first salvo caught the company out in the open. When the plasma struck, many of the mines that the Helljumpers had been carrying were detonated, shredding dozens of ODSTs just as they had shredded the Covenant soldiers. Dozens more were vaporized instantly, some suffered horrible burns and wounds and died quickly. But there were some, a fraction of the Company, that only suffered minor burns or instant amputations and tried to fight as best they could. Alex and Jason were the only two uninjured men in the whole Company, and they were the two inflicting the most damage to the large alien vehicles.

Jason and Alex were pumping round after round downrange with pinpoint accuracy, destroying a wraith roughly every four shots. They had disabled seven so far, but there were still eight left, and soon they would shift their fire to them.

The seven remaining Wraiths fired four more salvos in rapid succession, both still aimed at the street level survivors. They completely wiped them out, leaving only Alex and Jason alive out of the five platoons of highly trained soldiers that they had dropped down with. Below them laid a solid glass field composed of some of the best soldiers that the UNSC had to offer.

When the second volley of plasma had struck, the rest of the undetonated mines had been set off, shredding everything on the battleground into confetti sized chunks and making it that that much easier for the final two salvos of Plasma Mortars to turn everything into a hot, giant, smooth mass of superheated goo.

"Jesus," Alex whispered from beside him. Both of their rifles were empty and needed reloading, but neither of them thought to reload them, instead choosing to lie there in shock.

"We have to leave. Now," Jason said, making sure that a sense of urgency was clear in his voice.

"No, we should finish the job, kill every last one of those Covenant bastards!" Alex protested, clearly wanting to do anything but leave. Jason remembered something that had been said to him years ago, but that he never believed that he would repeat until now.

"Tactical retreat is always preferable to death."

"What?" Alex asked, obviously confused. "How the hell can you say that? Those were our friends out there!"

The wraiths had stopped firing when the last of the ground based resistance had been killed, but now they seemed to remember that Alex and Jason were still there, and still posed a huge threat to them. There were only seven of the Covenant tanks left, but they fired one last salvo into the air; a salvo that was most definitely going to reduce Alex and Jason to a molten goop on the edge of the rooftop. Alex reloaded and started firing, taking out three more of the Wraiths in a matter of seconds.

"Get up and run you idiot!" Jason yelled. He sprang to his feet, holding his rifle in his hand. He grabbed Alex by the arm and dragged him to his feet. Both of them kept solid holds on their rifles, taking them with them along with the full combat loads of ammunition that were still stored in their armor. They ran towards their pods, stopping when they reached them so that Jason could swap his Rifle for a shotgun.

"Keep your Rifle, we may need it, but I foresee a lot of close quarters combat in our future." Jason said.

"Why did we run?!" Alex snapped at Jason. Jason froze. Alex had never used a tone like that with him before. They had been best friends for years, and had had their fair share of arguments, but nothing like this.

"So we wouldn't be killed," Jason replied quietly, not seeing why Alex failed to understand.

"We should have stayed and killed those fuckers!"

"Then go back and finish them off, but it's suicidal!" Jason retorted angrily. There was a moment of heavy silence between them. Alex stared at him, as if challenging Jason to stop him, and then turned on his heel and jogged back to the edge of the rooftop where they had been laying only moments before.

"They're gone." He whispered over the open Comm channel. His tone was a solid mixture of hurt and rage..

"Good," Jason said, "Then they probably think that we're dead, and they won't be looking for us. We'll have the element of surprise as long as we lay low."

Alex didn't say anything, he just walked back towards Jason, passing him and continuing on to the next rooftop.

"Where are you going?" Jason asked, "We need to stick together. We have to watch each other's backs!"

"I'm going to find and kill the Elites that were driving those Wraiths. Don't follow me unless you're willing to help."

"That's suicide! Come back!" Jason yelled after him. Alex kept walking.

Jason watched his best friend walk off, leaving him alone in the huge hostile city. He stood there for several minutes, thinking about what his next move should be. He finally decided that before anything else, he should find a place to act as a base of operations. He would need somewhere to sleep if he was going to be down here for any extended length of time _._ He checked the status of his Comms. The short range was fully operational, but the long range channel was down, most likely jammed by the Covenant.

He knew that he would have to disable that jammer if he were to have any chance of surviving the next few days. With that goal in mind, he set off.

He walked to the edge of the rooftop that overlooked the street, leaving his rifle in his drop pod. He had made numerous modifications to his Rifle to make it function as smoothly as it could by adding a flash suppressing barrel, an additional zoom level, and a more adjustable stock that was currently fitted for him. It would be sad to see it go, but he couldn't foresee it being quite as useful in the city as his shotgun would be.

As Jason attached a rope to the edge of the rooftop, he thought briefly about going back for his rifle, but decided against it. He quickly rappelled down the building, landing with a thud on the slippery glass street that had once been his fellow ODSTs. He would have to leave the rope there, which was unfortunate as it could come in useful later. But he had no way of detaching it from the rooftop.

Jason walked to the middle of the deserted battleground and squatted down besides the darkest patch of glass on the whole street. This was where his fellow soldiers and friends had been the most densely grouped.

He pulled his pistol from it's holster on his thigh and fired three tightly grouped shots into the glass street, causing cracks to radiate outward for several feet. He reached down, shifting the cracked glass aside with his hands, and picked up three decently sized chunks, maybe a few centimeters long. He placed them deep inside one of his armor's storage sections.

Jason Blackwell stood up, looking around and taking in the destroyed city around him. He slowly walked onwards towards where his Company had intended to go, towards the heart of the city. He needed to get moving if he was going to survive the night.

Jason Blackwell walked down the street quickly but quietly, not wanting to alert any Covenant troops to his presence. He wanted to stay under the radar if he could; as long as the Covenant though all the troops that had dropped into the city were dead, then he would be able to work without having to worry too much about being hunted down.

As he walked down the street, he passed a supermarket that looked like it hadn't been raided too badly when the Covenant invaded. It was right next door to a large apartment building, and he considered stopping for the night. _I could stay here. If I can get by on food from the store then I won't have to use my rations for now._

Jason quickly entered the store, grabbing a can of fruit, a loaf of bread, and some sandwich meat. As soon as he had what he needed, he left the store and quickly walked over to the apartment building.

He found a small room with a window facing the street on the third floor, and decided to take refuge in it for now. _This room could serve as a useful place to fall back to after destroying the Comms Jammer._ He thought. _Until I find it, I could probably find out more about the Covenant presence in the city._

Jason ate quickly. He was tired, and it was getting late. He would need to rest if he was going to make any attempt at striking back against the covenant. He slid a heavy desk in front of the door, which would buy him a few extra seconds if something tried to force its way in.

And with the desk at the door and his shotgun by the bed, Jason Blackwell slept.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

 **1323 Hours, August 27, 2552 (Military Calendar)/Epsilon Eridani System, planet Reach**

He wasn't carrying much; only his rifle, knife, and grenades. He didn't want anything slowing him down or restricting him in a fight.

Alex had stashed his gear in an abandoned apartment in the building he was crouched next to. He would retrieve it after his self-imposed mission was complete; which reminded him of why he was hiding here in the first place.

He needed to kill every single Covenant soldier he could find; starting with those Wraiths. _They took everything from me. My family, my planet, and now my Company._ It was unthinkable to him that anyone could lose this much in a war. Trillions dead across the galaxy, all because of the Covenant. And he only had himself to blame. _I should have been there. I should have stopped them from glassing my home. But I wasn't there, and I wasn't even able to stop them from killing my Company._

There was nothing that he could do about the past. It was done, over, unchangeable. The only thing he could do now was focus on the future. Once the Wraiths had been stopped he could turn his attention to the other Covenant forces in the city, and then the planet. But first he needed to avenge his Company.

They were close now. He couldn't see them, but he had been watching them for several hours now, and he knew their schedule by heart. Once he had known that, setting a trap for them had been easy.

He had scavenged two LOTUS Anti-Tank mines from his company's drop pods and placed them in the middle of the street beneath some light trash. The gravity fluctuations beneath the Wraiths should be enough to set the mines off, but he wanted to be positive, and so had set them up for manual detonation.

 _And there they are._

The four remaining Wraiths turned the corner and began coming up the street. He crouched silently behind a pillar and double checked that the mines were set to manual detonation. Alex watched as the first three Covenant tanks glided over the deadly mines, only detonating them once the last tank in the column was directly over them.

The twin towers of fire and shrapnel blew through the alien armor with ease, killing the driver and gunner instantly, and triggering a chain reaction within the Wraith. A few short seconds later the Wraith exploded into a ball of blue and white plasma. The blast caused Alex's visor to automatically tint, and he had to duck back behind the column to avoid being seen and allow his visor to return to normal.

When he peeked out again, he noted that the blast had pushed the third Wraith into the second, knocking several armored panels off of both. Alex tossed two grenades in rapid succession hoping to catch all three Wraiths while they were stunned from the sudden attack, but the lead Covenant tank moved forward out of harm's way. He ducked behind the column again, crouching down to avoid being hit with the brunt of the shock wave.

He heard the distinctive click of his external audio input cutting out to protect his hearing, and then felt chunks of stone and metal rain down on and around him as they were knocked off the building in the dual explosion.

Alex stood, brushing himself off before he stepped out from behind the pillar again. He could see the exposed cooling vent on the back of the final Wraith, and raised his rifle, taking careful aim before placing four rapid shots into the sensitive backside of the tank.

The rounds penetrated just as they were supposed to, and he could hear the whine as the reactor core of the Wraith heated up rapidly. With nothing to cool it, small explosions began spreading across the blood splattered surface of the Covenant tank. After a few short seconds, the reactor went critical and the final tank exploded in a ball of plasma just like the three before it had. He stepped back behind the column again, reloading his rifle carefully. He took a deep breath, calming himself before he pushed off the column and turned around to collect his gear.

Only instead of a deserted street, he found himself face to face with a towering Elite in shining golden armor.

He fired reflexively, the barrel of the weapon pressed firmly into the Elite's abdomen. The bullet was deflected slightly by his energy shield, rupturing the barrel of the rifle and sending shards of steel through the Elite's armor.

He roared in pain and wrenched the weapon out of Alex's hands; bashing him on the shoulder with it before tossing it aside. Alex pulled his tactical knife from its sheath and swung, but the Elise sidestepped away and activated his Energy Sword. He swung it at Alex, and caught him across the side; gouging through his armor and into the skin.

"Ah!" He exclaimed, swinging at the Elite again.

He managed to stab his knife into the towering alien's shoulder, but it became wedged between two panels of armor. Alex was weaponless now, and facing a much larger armed opponent. He began to step back quickly, needing to create as much room to work as possible.

"Die heretic!" The Elite roared.

"Wait, why am I a heretic?" Alex asked, hoping to delay the Elite for long enough to come up with a plan.

"You have defied the holy path, and destroyed countless ruins and artifacts. Your mere presence taints this city." The Elite bellowed. Alex was momentarily stunned that the Elite had such a firm grasp of the language, but quickly pressed on.

"I have done nothing, I know nothing of your Gods. Does ignorance make me an irredeemable heretic, or is there a chance of redemption for me?"

"Your kind know no true gods. You are incapable of truth, and honor. Even now you attack from hiding; refusing to show your face and fight."

"Had I shown my face, you would have used your vehicles to kill me before you gave me the chance to prove my skill as a warrior." Alex could tell that he had very nearly reached the end of the Elite's patience, and quickly assessed what weapons he had available to him. _Two grenades. That's all I have._

"This is true. Though had you declared your intention to fight honorably fast enough, I would have given you that fight. Now however, you are a coward, and a heretic, and you must die!" The Elite lunged again, and Alex stepped aside and tossed a grenade behind the Elite. It landed too far away to do any significant damage, and the Elite ignored it.

Alex tried a new tactic; lunging forward and striking the handle of his knife with his open palm, twisting it sharply and forcing it deeper into the alien's shoulder.

He roared, shoving Alex aside and pulling the weapon from his shoulder with ease. He tossed it behind him; well out of Alex's reach.

Alex tried to dice past him, but the Elite had anticipated the move. He was already in motion when the sword came up, severing his left arm cleanly below the shoulder.

Alex fell hard onto his side, several meters away from his knife.

He clambered quickly to his feet, clenching his right hand into the tightest fist he could manage, and turned to face the Elite again. He was right in front of Alex, and attacked with the sword again. The sword missed, but his elbow connected firmly with Alex's chin. The impact shattered the glass of his visor and knocked the helmet off of his head; sending it flying through the air. It landed several meters away next to the burned out remains of the first Wraith Alex had destroyed.

He was truly out of options, and they both knew it.

"I commend you for lasting so long with no true weapons. I am sure that this was a feat that few humans could have accomplished. You are indeed a great fighter amongst your people." The Elite rumbled. Strangely, the words didn't make Alex feel any better about what he knew was coming.

He saw the Elite's attention flicker away for half a second, distracted by a strange shadow cast by the flames of the burning Wraiths. Alex seized the opportunity; grasping his last grenade in his right hand as he slowly backed away from the alien. He primed the grenade silently, steadily backing away from the Elite.

"You cannot hope to run human. I will cut you down."

Alex backed away as quickly as hid feet would allow. The Elite took the bait, sprinting towards him as Alex mentally reached the count of three, lobbing the grenade to the ground in front of the Elite. The alien stepped over it just as it detonated; sending flying shards of metal into this underside and propelling him through the air towards Alex.

Alex saw the flash of light as the plasma grenades the Elite was carrying detonated, and then felt a wave of heat and pressure hit his front, and then nothing.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

 **1146 Hours, August 28, 2552 (Military Calendar)/Epsilon Eridani System, Unknown Building, planet Reach**

Jason Blackwell woke up in an unfamiliar room, with sunlight streaming through the window. _How long have I been asleep?_ He wondered. He immediately donned his helmet, checking the mission timer and comparing it to the separate clock displaying Reach's time. It was 11:46.

 _Jesus, I need to get up._ He quickly scrambled to his feet; collecting his weapons and preparing to leave the room. Before he left, he stashed the majority of the contents of his pack in the room for later.

He crouched on a balcony outside the door of the one room apartment, looking down on the street below. He watched Covenant troops come and go, noting their timing and spotting a pattern that would allow him to slip by unnoticed. As he watched, several Phantoms flew overhead; forcing him to duck back inside the building. He noted that they all came and went from the same two directions, and they were full of Covenant troops one way, and empty on the way back.

 _There must be a base that way,_ he speculated. _I guess that's where I'm going. That's probably where the radar jammer is._ He waited for a break in the patrols and made his way street side. He considered trying to make his way there by moving across the rooftops, but that would be too risky if a Phantom flew overhead and spotted him.

Jason made his way down the street towards where he believed the main base of operations to be. So far, no patrols had come his way, and that greatly relieved him. If he ran into a patrol then he might be forced to engage them, and that would eliminate his element of surprise. Since that was the only thing he had going for him at the moment, he was nervous to lose it.

The streets were deserted; the only things left on them were bodies, burnt out cars, and shattered glass. Every now and then Jason came upon the body of another Helljumper; giving him hope that he wasn't alone, and that he might run into other Helljumpers that he could team up with.

The Helljumper's bodies were inevitably accompanied by a large number of dead Covenant troops. He searched the bodies of his fellow Marines, hoping to find something that would help him live a little longer, but the three that he'd found so far had fought to the last bullet, and two of them looked like they had managed to kill a few with their knives before they died.

Those two ODSTs reminded Jason of Alex. Alex had loved his knife. He kept it sharper than anyone else in their Company; a fact which occasionally earned him a few joking remarks. Alex saw the knife as a symbol of what it meant to be a Helljumper: the best men and women the UNSC had to offer.

Jason considered grabbing a knife from one of them to replace his, but decided against it. It didn't feel right. Guns were almost entirely interchangeable, bullets and grenades were spent and replaced freely, even armor could be easily replaced. But a knife was a very personal weapon. There were no parts that you could swap out to make it function any better, nothing you could do to make it faster or improve it, you could only sharpen it and practice with it. It was already the ultimate instrument of death.

Instead, Jason removed the memory cards from all three ODSTs' helmets to review later. Assuming he made it out of here in one piece he would be able to get them back to the higher ups so they could put together a better picture of what had happened down here

Jason had only been walking for about ten minutes past the last ODSTs body before he spotted something that caused him to stop in his tracks.

Another Company's worth of drop pods filled the street, but they looked abandoned. The only thing indicating where the ODSTs might have gone was a dead Jackal patrol a little bit further up the street.

Jason started jogging forward towards where he could only hope the other Company of Helljumpers had gone.

As he ran onwards, he saw more and more signs of UNSC activity, three more dead Jackal patrols and five dead Elites, all with no obvious human casualties. _If I can catch up to them, then I might be able to catch a ride back to the ship._

After thirty minutes of jogging, Jason Blackwell came up on an intersection and stopped dead in his tracks, seemingly rooted to the spot. It took him several moments to take it in and regain his ability to function.

The Company had been ambushed.

He walked forward slowly, carefully making his way through the corpses. Bodies on both ends of the street were riddled with holes made by some sort of heavy plasma rifle. After examining the battleground for several minutes, he thought that he had figured out what had happened, but he wanted to be sure.

Jason found a Helljumpers with an intact helmet and removed the memory card, slotting it into the receiver on his own helmet. The men hadn't been dead for more than a day, so he didn't have to go back too far in the helmet cam's video.

When Jason found the spot where the Company was ambushed, he went back a few more minutes to when they were turning the corner.

The Helljumper whose chip Jason had found had been near the middle of the Company, and from where he was, Jason was able to see how the Sergeant Major had arranged the company for traveling. At the very front walked five ODSTs with SPNKrs, followed by troops with MA5C ICWS assault rifles. The Sergeant Major was walking a few steps ahead of the soldier whose helmet cam recording Jason had taken.

Jason watched as the Company finished turning the corner, not knowing when exactly the ambush would occur. The company was roughly halfway down the street when the Covenant struck.

Ten Ghosts turned the corner and began racing down the street towards the front of the company. The Helljumpers turned, looking behind them, and Jason could see that there were ten more Ghosts were racing towards the back of the group as well. They were trapped, with nowhere to go.

The well trained and experienced soldiers didn't need to be ordered to shoot. Five rockets sailed from the tubes of the rocket launchers, al heading towards the Ghosts in the front. The rockets were leading the Ghosts by several feet, so when all ten alien vehicles braked and came to a sudden stop, all five rockets fell well short of their targets.

When the Ghosts opened fire, men started falling immediately. No one could stand up to the twin plasma cannons on the front of the single occupant vehicles, and the large caliber plasma rounds were quickly cutting into the Company. The first to go had been the soldiers with rocket launchers, since they offered the biggest threat.

However, the Helljumpers were quickly putting up a resistance, firing at the Ghosts and putting them down one by one. It was looking better and better for the ODSTs, they were easily going to destroy the Ghosts before even a fourth of them were wiped out.

Suddenly, a single shot rang out, this one different than the rest. It was high pitched and accompanied by a bright blue beam of light. It slashed downward through the air and drilled a perfect hole through the head of the Sergeant Major. There was a temporary lull in the outgoing fire as the soldiers realized they had a new front to fight; a gap that was quickly filled with a hail of Energy Bolts from the rooftops on either side.

The owner of the helmet cam looked up, seeing the shooters for the first time. There were over twenty Jackals with Beam Rifles lining the rooftops to either side. The sniper fire was pouring in, forcing the Helljumpers to split their fire between the Ghosts and the Jackals.

The ODSTs never stood a chance against the better organized and more heavily armed Covenant troops. They were falling in droves, between the snipers and Ghosts; the Company was reduced to a few troops in a matter of seconds.

The man whose camera Jason had tapped into was one of the last that fell, and he could only watch as the Company was decimated. Man after man was falling to the combined fire of the Covenant, and eventually, Jason heard a loud scream and watched as the camera angle quickly changed. It was sideways now, lying flat on the ground.

There was only one Helljumper left standing in Jason's line of sight; still firing on the snipers. The Ghosts had stopped shooting; they were letting the Jackals finish them off. The last ODST standing was facing away from the Majority of the Ghosts, so he couldn't see the Golden armored Elite dismount and slowly approach from behind.

Jason watched in silence as the Elite walked up to the Helljumper from behind, pulling an unlit Energy Sword handle from his waist as he did so.

When the Elite was only a step away from the ODST, he lit the sword and thrusted forward. The Energy Blade stabbed straight through the man, jutting over a foot out of the front of his torso.

The Elite lifted the man into the air, causing him to sink down even further on the sword. It said something garbled in its own language, and then tossed the dead Helljumper to the side.

Jason continued to watch the footage until the remaining Ghosts drove off and everything was still.

He pulled the memory card from his helmet and held it in his hand, staring at it for several minutes. He thought about what he had seen on the video, the Company getting completely wiped out just like his had been. He looked around and collected several more chips from the ODST's helmets before turning to leave.

Jason slid the memory chips into a compartment of his pack, making sure that they were well secured before he stood up and began to jog back towards the drop pods that he had passed roughly an hour ago. If he could gather supplies and make it back to his room, then he would be able to call the day at least semi-productive. Gathering supplies was a key part of any operation.

Jason stopped before he reached the edge of the battleground. He turned around, knowing that there were supplies here that would be useful to him later.

He made his way back to the far edge of the slaughter ground. He picked up two MA5C assault rifles and reloaded them before placing them in his pack as best he could, since a few inches of both rifles stuck out the top. He then grabbed as many magazines for them as he could reasonably carry, tossing them into his still mostly empty pack.

 _I might want to swap my SMG for the Rifle at some point. The increased firepower and range might be more useful to me later on._

Once he had finished collecting ammunition, he stood and immediately realized just how tired he was. He very nearly couldn't stand on his own, but he managed to push himself to his feet. Jason pulled out a stim to wake himself up and give him the strength to keep going. As he stabbed it into his thigh, he felt immediately better, but knew that he wouldn't be able to make it all the way back to his room tonight.

 _If I can make it back to their drop pods, I can find some food and I can crash in one of the SOEIVs for the night._ He started back towards the pods, which he knew to be roughly an hour away if he was walking instead of running like he had been earlier.

As he made his way towards the drop pods, he started to see signs of more recent Covenant activity, which worried him. If he could make it to the pods then he'd be fine, he could close the hatch and hide for the night. The pods were designed so that something similar could be done. They had external ports that could be opened so that they weren't airtight and you could breathe without worrying about your air supply.

He thought about which pod he wanted to use while he walked. _An SOEIV on the outside edge would let me escape faster, but one towards the middle would let me hide better._ It was a tough decision that could mean the difference between life and death for him.

 _Middle,_ He decided. It would definitely be better to hide from a horde of Covenant soldiers rather than try and run from them.

Jason was about fifteen minutes away from the drop pods and he was ready to sit down and sleep. He was cradling his SMG in his arms, his shotgun on its sling on his back. He kept walking along, hoping that he wasn't going to run into any resistance between here and the group of pods.

He walked for five more minutes before he came up to a small strip of shops with big plate glass windows, most of which were shattered. He heard a scream from inside one of them.

Having woken up quite a bit, he switched to his shotgun and got ready to enter the small shop. He kicked in the door just in time to see a Marine with an M6G pistol standing in the hallway firing into a doorway. He was carrying a large pouch, but other than his pistol, he was empty handed. Jason started running towards him, but he didn't make it in time.

Ten bright blue bursts of plasma shot through the doorway in rapid succession and impacted the Marine's arms and chest, killing him almost instantly. Jason made sure that there was a shell in the chamber of his shotgun and quietly made his way to the door.

His motion sensor showed that there was only one target inside the room, and based on the noises he heard from inside he felt it was safe to assume that he was facing a very angry brute.

He was just outside the doorway, and he could hear the Brute coming towards him. He exhaled quietly. _I only have one shot at this,_ he thought to himself. The Brute wasn't rushing to the door to kill him, which meant that it probably didn't know that he was there.

Jason pointed his shotgun across the doorway, finger on the trigger, and waited until he could see his target.

As soon as the Brute's head extended into the doorframe, Jason leaned forward and pressed the muzzle of the 8 Gauge shotgun against the Brute's temple and gently squeezed the trigger.

The trigger released the spring, the spring pushed the pin, the pin impacted the firing cap, the firing cap ignited, the gunpowder ignited, 15 9.5 mm pellets were pushed out of the front of the Soellkraft 8 Gauge shotgun shell, they raced down the barrel, the pellets exited the barrel and immediately impacted the Brute's temple, they reached the midpoint of the Brute's head, they broke the sound barrier, the shockwave caused the Brute's head to go away, and the pellets finished their journey when they lodged themselves in the far wall.

Jason racked the slide; pulling it back and slamming it forward again just as the Brute's body crashed to the floor. Jason glanced down at it, making sure that he wasn't going to get up. He had seen Brutes take far more than a single shotgun shell and keep going, and he didn't want to turn his back on a very angry Brute.

He stepped over the Brute's body and crouched down next to the Marine. He looked like he hadn't slept in days, and he certainly hadn't been able to shave. Jason examined the pouch that he had been carrying. It was full of magazines for the Marine's M6G pistol. The rounds were fully compatible with Jason's M6C SOCOM, which was good because the Brute's plasma bolts had melted the Marine's sidearm and the rounds for the Marine's gun were far more powerful that the bullets that Jason had been carrying.

Jason slung the pouch over his shoulder and stood up. The Marine had carried five full combat loads of pistol ammunition, which was also good, because now Jason wouldn't have to keep an eye out for handgun ammo, and he could upgrade to the more powerful ammo type.

He swapped clips in his pistol before squatting down beside the Marine once again. He reached out and gently pulled his dog tags from around his neck. Jason slid them into the same compartment that the helmet cam chips were in.

He stood up again and walked back out the door in the front of the store. He resumed his walk to the pods that he intended to spend the night in, hoping that he would be able to get there without any further incidents like the one he had just gone through.

Ten minutes later, Jason had reached them. He looked inside each one he passed, grabbing small amounts of rations and other supplies from each. Finally, he reached the center, and selected the pod that he was going to sleep in.

It had been the pod of another sniper, like him. It was lined with 12.7 x 114 mm APFSDS magazines, was extremely cramped, would likely be somewhat hot and uncomfortable to sleep in, and it made him feel at home.

He clambered inside and sat down, closing the hatch. The pod was small, but after dozens of drops, and hundreds of simulated drops, it felt comfortable, and maybe even a little roomy. He was able to spread himself out some, since the gear that was usually inside the pod had been taken by the pods deceased owner.

Jason ate the borrowed rations quickly; he was extremely hungry after everything he had been through today. As soon as he finished eating, he strapped himself in and drifted off to sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

 **0736 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar)/Epsilon Eridani System, Space Dock Gamma, in orbit above planet Reach**

James was unstrapping the Explosives from the front of the Pelican Dropship, but it was taking longer than he expected, and was made much more complicated by the lack of gravity on the station.

John, Linda, and James had only just boarded the station, and things were already going poorly. They had had a rough landing that had left their Pelican crippled and no longer flyable. The high explosives that were strapped to the nose of the ship had been placed there to help them blast their way through Space Dock Gamma to _The Circumference_. There was an intact NAV computer on board that needed to be wiped due to Cole Protocol, and it had somehow been 'overlooked' when the Covenant started arriving in-system.

Unfortunately, since their Dropship was crippled, the explosives weren't in a position to be used effectively. So James was tasked with removing them so they could place them where they needed to go.

They had been there for less than three minutes, and the mission was already faltering and straying from the established plan. Needless to say, James was more than a bit concerned. The station was probably crawling with Covenant troops by now, and if they showed up, then even three well-armed Spartans might not be enough to secure the data onboard _The Circumference_ and prevent it from falling into enemy hands.

Plasma flashed overhead. _Crap,_ James thought, _those shots are big; most likely ship-based_. They weren't hitting with very much accuracy, so at the moment they didn't concern him. He only became concerned when the large rounds stopped, and plasma rifle and Needler rounds started impacting his armor's shields and the Dropship around him.

"Take cover," John said. James glanced at his motion sensor and saw that John and Linda had ducked down behind a ship on the opposite side of the platform. He would have listened to them and taken cover, but was almost done freeing the explosives, and he needed to keep shielding them with his body. If a stray plasma round or a Needler crystal struck them, then this mission would end very quickly. There were enough explosives here to blow through ten centimeters of Titanium-A Battleplate, and they needed them to reach _The Circumference_.

"Blue-two," John said, a touch of concern creeping into his tone, "I said fall back."

Less than a second after he finished speaking, James heard the alarm start going off in his helmet; telling him that his shields were down. A shower of Needler crystals impacted his side, and he felt one hit his thruster harness. _Shit,_ he thought; _please don't let that have punctured._

Half a second later, he felt the needles that had struck his armor detonate, along with the one that had punctured the tank on his thruster harness. The gasses inside the tank exploded outward, sending James rocketing across the station.

James hit a wall hard, and he heard something in his helmet pop. He bounced off the wall and realized that he was headed out to space. _Damn, this is bad,_ he thought. He could feel his breathing speed up, and he knew that his heart rate was likely rising along with it. He worked to regain his composure. _I have to keep my head. If an opportunity presents itself then I have to be prepared to take it._

"Blue-two…" James heard. John was trying to contact him, "… in." _So,_ he thought, _it was something to do with the Comms that made the popping noise._ Suddenly, he knew then what it had been, and it was bad. There was a chip that had the tendency to pop out when there was an exceptionally hard impact on the helmet, and without it, Comms shut off. _Someone should put in a request to have that fixed._

"Can't control spin," James said, knowing that they probably couldn't hear him. His pack was no longer venting air, but he was still rapidly moving away from the station. He caught a brief glimpse of the tiny specs that were his friends on the enormous station. The shipyard was swarming with Covenant troops. "They've boarded in mass. They're everywhere, hurry up and reach _The Circumference_."

James knew that there was nothing more he could say. The chip in his helmet had most likely fallen out completely now, and he was over three Kilometers out from Space Dock Gamma. He couldn't provide any useful information at this point. He needed to figure out how to stop his spin.

His shoulder hit a large piece of melted Battleplate; a remnant of one of the many ships that had been destroyed in orbit recently. It hurt, and completely drained his shields again, but now he was facing in the direction that he was heading, and that was a start.

James glanced at his shield bar. It was still flashing red, and the alarm continued to blare in his helmet. His shields weren't recharging. He started the system's reboot process, but knew that that took almost a minute to complete, which left James vulnerable when he entered a large cloud of small debris left over from the space battles nearby.

None of the pieces were larger than a few centimeters in diameter, and they were mostly solid chunks of Titanium-A with smooth, rounded edges that were probably the result of explosions from within the ships that they originated from. Some were fresh enough to still be glowing white hot, and as he smashed his way through the cloud of metal shrapnel, he could hear some of the pieces scraping his armor.

He carefully looked up, making sure to not alter his current trajectory, which could have sent him wildly spinning again. He had to see where he was going. Unfortunately, the debris field that he was in was preventing him from seeing anything further than a meter ahead of him. It was also preventing his shields from recharging, since every time they started to restart, they were knocked offline again by a piece of floating metal.

James glanced at a display on his HUD. He had about twenty minutes of Oxygen left before he wouldn't be able to breathe. _That's not a death I'd particularly like to have to go through._

Just as James was starting to lose hope, he broke through, and was free of the debris and junk that he had been flying through for the last ten minutes. Unfortunately, he now had a new problem. There was a Covenant Dropship directly in front of him, and he was going to hit it in a matter of seconds.

He noticed that the side hatch that he was heading towards was wide open, allowing him to see much of the inside. It looked abandoned.

James was able to use the movement of his arms, and his not-so-limited knowledge of inertia and physics, to redirect himself so that he landed inside the ship. Once he landed, James carefully worked his way through the Dropship to the controls, where he found a flash frozen, and very much dead, Elite still strapped into the pilot's chair.

 _Doesn't matter,_ he thought, _that chair probably wasn't comfortable anyways._ The gravity was still off, so James hovered over the controls. Everything was dark, and he hoped that that didn't mean that the ship was completely dead in space.

There was a single floating red button on the very outskirts of the pilot's console, and James reached to towards it. _I would assume that this would be what powers up the ship, since there's only one button._

James managed to plant his feet on the floor and engage the magnetic clamps just as he tapped the button. He felt the ship hum to life beneath him, and watched as the controls sprang to life and lit up across the panel. Lights were coming on all throughout the ship, and James disengaged the clamps on his boots before leaving the control board for a moment, carefully making his way back into the troop compartment. He slowly worked his way back to the open hatch, taking great care to not propel himself out of it.

There was a small control by the open hatch that James felt safe to assume was the control panel for it. He tapped the largest and most central of the floating buttons, and then happily watched as the doors closed and sealed themselves. He went back up to the cockpit. There were a series of controls near the button that he had used to turn the ship back on, arranged in a column below it.

His translation software had been updated recently to better accommodate his needs for the mission that the Spartans had been on before coming here. Though it was never put into place, the intent had been for them to board and capture a Covenant capital ship, and use it to trick the Covenant and bring an end to the war.

James now let his translation software go to work on the column of buttons, and it only took it a moment to give him a readout. Artificial Gravity, Pressurize, Depressurize, Shields, and Self Destruct. _Why the hell would they have a self-destruct?_ He wondered. He pressed the Artificial Gravity button, and was relieved when he fell a short distance and felt his boots firmly land on the deck of the ship. _That's one problem solved_ , he thought to himself.

He pressed Pressurize. He watched on the display as the ship made sure that all the seals were in place. When it confirmed that the Phantom could indeed hold air, it began to repressurize with highly compressed tanks of oxygen that were stored somewhere onboard.

It only took a couple of minutes for the Phantom to slowly pressurize itself, and once James confirmed that there was indeed breathable oxygen, he allowed himself a small smile. Something was finally going his way.

His armor was refilling its small backup reserves of oxygen, and replenishing the scrubbers that allowed him to recycle air for ninety minutes at a time.

He looked down at the controls again, then at the view screens. He watched as a Pelican Dropship sailed past in the distance, heading away from Space Dock Gamma and making its way off screen. _They completed their mission then,_ he thought. _John wouldn't leave unless he had managed to destroy the NAV data on_ The Circumference.

James considered trying to follow the Pelican back to _The Autumn,_ but without working Comms, he would be blown away the second they saw him.

He considered trying to use the Phantom's communications systems, but he didn't have the slightest idea on how they worked, and he would most likely only wind up alerting any Covenant ship in the area to his presence.

 _I should try and make my way planetside. From there I could catch a ride back up to the fleet, or I could get orders and make myself useful._ James' hands hovered over the controls that he could only assume directed the vehicle's motion.

He tapped one, and the ship jerked upwards. He lightly touched another, this one directly below the first button he had touched, and this time, the Phantom slowly moved downwards. James experimented will all of the controls in front of him, quickly getting a hang of how the ship worked. He tapped the button that controlled the shields, and saw several pieces of floating junk get propelled away from the invisible energy barrier that materialized in place around the Phantom.

 _Good, now I just have to get down to the surface._ He began to slowly move the Phantom forward, before gently turning it towards the planet below. They hadn't had time to be briefed on all the major cities of Reach, so James didn't quite know what he was looking at once he came into visual range.

James could see several Covenant ships converged on one location. _That's probably where the Orbital Defense Station's generators are._ It would be suicidal to try and land there. The Covenant would try and hail him, and failing that, they would shoot him down; and the UNSC would certainly waste no time in destroying his ship. James spotted another major city; this one had only one Covenant cruiser hovering over it. He headed towards that.

James reached the outer atmosphere after about twenty minutes of flying, and only then realized that he had no idea what he was doing. The ship was jerking around, and he had to fight hard to keep it from spinning out of control.

James was now plummeting towards the city, descending far more rapidly than he would have liked. Based on what he could see, James estimated that he would be impacting the ground in roughly one minute, at an approximate rate of three hundred Kilometers an hour. _Too fast._

His hands sped across the controls, desperately trying to control his descent. He managed to get the nose of the craft up, so he was falling straight down, belly first. The shield was fading, the friction between it and the atmosphere was creating a significant amount of heat at this speed, and it didn't take long for it to give out. An alarm started to blare in the cockpit, and that's when it started to get hot.

The hull of the Phantom was only on fire for a short time before James managed to get it under control and steady out his descent to the planet below. He flew down at an even, controlled rate, quickly reaching the rooftops of the higher buildings and flying over them in a straight, horizontal path. He saw a good roof in the distance to set down on; one that would provide him with plenty of room for what would surely be a rough landing.

James saw something alarming on his view screens. To his left, he saw a pelican Dropship, which under normal circumstances would have been a very welcome sight, but he was in a Covenant craft. To his right, he saw something even worse; another Phantom, this one heading straight for the Pelican.

The pilot of the Pelican didn't seem to see this threat, and instead was heading straight for James. James saw the other Phantom open fire, but for now it was too far away for it to be able to hit the Pelican with any sort of accuracy, and most of its first volley went wide. James left the pilots station and quickly slid over to the weapons chair. He started pressing buttons, and a targeting reticule immediately popped up on the screen in front of him.

James quickly discovered how to aim and fire, and targeted the other Phantom, firing a salvo of his own. James' shots started connecting, and the other ship quickly redirected its shots towards him.

It was only now that James realized that in his haste, he hadn't reactivated the shields. He sprang back over to the pilot's station and reactivated them. They struggled to come back to life at James' inexperienced hands, and immediately went down again due to the incoming plasma rounds that splashed across it when it came online. James saw the Pelican redirect its attention to the other Phantom and begin to fire its 70mm Chain Gun.

The Phantom continued to fire on James, and after a few more seconds, he lost his starboard engines. He quickly began spiraling out of control, thankfully heading in the direction of a small building that might be able to absorb some of his momentum.

He was two hundred meters above the ground now. _This is a bad idea._ He realized. _This ship is going to explode when it hits the building, and I don't want to be on board for that._ He sprinted for the hatch and engaged the hatch release panel, watching in frustration as it slowly hissed open.

As soon as it opened enough for him to be able to exit the rapidly descending craft, he thrust himself out of it.

He was still about ten stories in the air, and rapidly moving towards a building. James scrunched himself into a ball, locked his armor's joints, and set all shields to full; finishing these tasks seconds before he hit the corner of one of the pillars that made up the outside of the building, bounced off, and sailed through an inch and a half of impact resistant safety glass and tumbled to a stop towards the top of the office building.

The self-adjusting layer in his armor over compensated for the impact, pressurizing to save him from the hit, but causing him to black out.

James was on his back, his limbs locked tightly against his body with the armor's joints still firmly locked. He had broken his nose when he had hit, and his blood covered the inside of his helmet; but he neither knew, nor cared.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

 **0812 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar)/Epsilon Eridani System, Rally Point Alpha, planet Reach**

Carris jogged up to Fred to find out what her orders were. Nearly everyone else had been tasked with their mission, and the rest of the Spartans were getting ready to move out.

"Sir," she asked, "What am I being assigned to?"

"There's a military installation roughly four klicks east of here. I need you and Kerensa to requisition a Pelican and head to Quezon. The city is under exceptionally heavy attack, and there isn't any explanation to it. The city holds no military value, so there must be something there that the Covenant wants." Fred told her.

"Sir, I would be more useful here. That sounds like a job for the Helljumpers."

"They've sent two companies already and we haven't heard from either. We can't afford to let them find whatever it is they're looking for; I need you in that city!" Fred ordered.

"Sir, yes sir!" Carris said, snapping to attention and saluting before jogging in the direction of the installation that had just been flagged on her HUD. Kerensa fell in behind her.

Carris pulled up a map of the major cities of Reach. Quezon wasn't more than fifty minutes away assuming they were traveling at the Pelican's maximum speed and didn't run into any trouble.

Carris was glad that she was tasked to this assignment with Kerensa. She was a determined fighter, and while she might not come out on top of every sparring match or win every race, Carris knew that she, like every Spartan there, would fight to her last breath and give it everything she had. As they headed towards the base, Carris assessed everything she knew about Kerensa. She needed to remember strengths and weaknesses, and since she had never deployed on a mission with Kerensa specifically, it took some thought to remember what she needed to.

She was the same height as Carris, and had the same build as all S-IIs did. That is, she was tall and lean, but could flip a small truck if she needed to. Carris's mind wandered some as they ran. She thought about Kerensa's bright red hair and her striking green eyes, both of which only served to complement the unnaturally pale skin that was stereotypical of all Spartans. Carris let her mind wander a little further as they ran; just because she didn't know much about Kerensa's fighting style didn't mean she knew just as little about her personality. She tried to snap herself out of it, but it was proving difficult.

 _There's no room for distractions in battle. And no time for a relationship as a Spartan. And besides, even if I did have time for a relationship, I'm into men._

 _I definitely like men._ She thought. _But… there's something about Kerensa. Is it possible that I could like both?_ These thoughts were quickly pushed from her mind. They were better saved for the uncommon downtime between deployments; not when they were fighting off a Covenant attack.

But Carris couldn't manage to banish the thoughts completely, and they continued to distract her as she ran.

Kerensa had a certain charm about her too; one that she probably didn't even know she had. She was always happy, she could always smile, was always ready to lend a hand to someone in need, even if there was nothing to smile about, or she was busy doing something else. She never got surly, or started thinking negatively; she was the most optimistic person Carris had ever met. Carris made up her mind then and there that when they were done on Reach, when they had won this planet back, she would take the time to try and get to know Kerensa better.

"What's wrong?" Kerensa asked, snapping Carris out of her trance. Carris realized that she had slowed down, and that Kerensa was a full five meters ahead of her. Carris also realized that the reason she didn't know Kerensa that well was because of Carris's own reclusive and quiet attitude. She preferred to be sitting near others so that she could feel like she was a part of their group, but she never contributed to their conversations.

"Oh," Carris said, "I'm sorry, I got distracted. It won't happen again."

"Okay," Kerensa said, seemingly unconcerned. "Then let's keep going."

Carris sped up and closed the gap between them, and they ran in silence for several more minutes until they reached the military installation that was going to have the Pelican that they needed to get to Quezon. When they reached the front gate though, what they found troubled them.

A dozen Marines guarded the gates, and they were under heavy attack. Several squads of Covenant troops were converging on the gates in what seemed like a never-ending stream. Thankfully it was the fairly standard ratio of eight to ten grunts and a couple Elites, and the Marines seemed to have it semi under control. They were staggering reloads and calling out their targets, so there were no gaps in the outgoing fire, and no shots were wasted. Carris and Kerensa stepped forward, firing on the remaining grunts and the last Elite left standing. Once they were put down, the two Spartans quickly approached the gate.

The Marines snapped to attention and saluted.

"We've been expecting you. Your Pelican is in bay three. Fully fueled, armed to the teeth, and full of a few surprises." The commanding officer told them.

"Do you need assistance in holding the gate?" Kerensa asked. "You have to be running low on supplies."

"We've radioed for support. A truck full of ammo and rations is on the way. In the meantime I think we can manage to hold it."

Just as he said that, a truck rolled around the corner inside the base, heading for the gate.

"There's our supplies," a Marine said excitedly. Nothing got a Marine more excited than more ammo to shoot things with.

They heard a loud whine, coming from the direction that Carris and Kerensa had come from, and getting louder.

At least a dozen Phantoms flew overhead, accompanied by at least as many banshees; all headed inside the base. The air defense turrets tried to shoot them down, but the combined fire of the Banshees and Phantoms quickly reduced them to molten slag. As they passed over, two or three of the Banshees fired their Plasma mortar at the resupply truck, igniting the ammo and explosives on board and turning it into a massive fireball.

"Shit!" the Marines' CO exclaimed.

"There's no point in trying to hold this gate any longer." Kerensa said. "Now you'd have to defend two fronts. You would be more useful inside the base defending the key buildings and unarmed personnel."

"Yeah," the Marine CO said. "No arguments here." He turned and opened the gate, and the Marines poured through in formation; Kerensa and Carris followed them in, but quickly passed them on their way to Hanger Bay 3.

Each bay was huge; at least as far as ground based structures were concerned. Each was roughly fifty meters tall and roughly half a kilometer wide and long. Carris knew that this military installation was huge, since she had seen a sign that would direct people on how to get to the dry docks for Frigates.

As they passed the first two hangar bays, Carris saw that each held something different. Hangar Bay 1 held 50 Skyhawk fighters, but that number was reduced to a handful now, and as Kerensa and Carris passed it another roared out of the open bay doors and headed off to defend the base.

Hanger Bay 2 had held 36 GA-TL1 Longsword-class Interceptors, but that was based off the readouts that Carris's HUD gave her as she looked inside, since all 36 were deployed elsewhere.

When they reached Hangar Bay 3, they entered at a run. This hangar held 50 D77-TL Pelican Dropships, but now there was only one, all the way towards the back of the hangar. Carris checked the readout panel beside it once they reached it. It was fully fueled and ready to go.

They boarded it and immediately discerned what the Marines had meant by surprises. A weapons rack was bolted to one of the walls of the Pelican's hold. On it were five MA5C assault rifles, five BR55 battle rifles, two M90 CAWS shotguns, one SPNKr rocket launcher, and a SRS99d-S2 sniper rifle. There were twenty magazines for each weapon, with thirty boxes of shells for the shotguns, and ten pairs of rockets for the rocket launchers.

"Damn," Kerensa said, "They really pulled out all the stops to make sure that we have what we need."

"Yeah they did," Carris agreed. She stepped to the cockpit and looked back towards the hangar doors. Ten Elites and over fifty grunts were pouring in. "Contacts!" she yelled.

Carris sat down in the pilot's seat, which was really too small to comfortably accommodate a Spartan, and began the startup processes for the ship. The group of Covenant soldiers was halfway to them.

"I'll hold them off, get the ship started!" Kerensa said. She stepped out the back and maneuvered to face the oncoming crowd, opening fire with her assault rifle. She burned through three clips before the Elites and Grunts started shooting. Carris saw Kerensa lob two grenades into the crowd, killing dozens of grunts, and wounding several more.

The startup process finished, and Carris took control of the chin-mounted 70mm chain gun. It only took her a few seconds to use it to level the horde of Covenant troops.

"Get inside," she yelled over the Comms, but Kerensa was already sprinting through the hatch. Carris turned in her seat to look behind her to make sure that she was inside before she took off.

Kerensa was in bad shape. Her armor was covered in plasma scoring, and parts of it were completely melted away and fused to her skin. Carris was amazed that she was still standing.

Carris quickly pulled up Kerensa's vitals in her HUD. They became extremely erratic half a second after Kerensa looked down at herself. Her heartbeat became extremely fast for several seconds, and Carris knew from experience what was about to happen. She bolted out of her seat and rushed over to her just in time to catch her as her legs gave out and she toppled to the deck.

Carris managed to get her strapped into one of the passenger seats in the back of the Pelican next to the weapons. She then ran to the hatch and closed it before returning to the controls.

"I'm getting you to one of the ships in orbit. They'll be able to put you in Cryo suspension until they can get you the best medical attention the UNSC has to offer." Carris said.

Kerensa pulled a container of Biofoam from her armor and injected it into her more serious wounds before using a stim to get her vitals back to where they should be.

"I'm fine, we need to get to Quezon," Kerensa protested.

"No," Carris said. "It'll only take an extra hour to get to the closest ship equipped with Cryo chambers and for me to get to Quezon."

"You won't be able to tackle Quezon on your own." Kerensa insisted.

"I'll be fine. Worse comes to worse and I'll just recon and report back to Fleet Com. But we need to get you to medical assistance. Spartans are going to be needed now more than ever, and we can't afford to lose even one." Carris said. "Especially you."

Kerensa exhaled, "okay."

Carris edged the Pelican out of the hangar, passing over the bodies of dozens of mutilated Covenant troops that she'd slaughtered with the chain gun. She expected to see a better scene outside the hangar, but she was wrong.

Over two dozen UNSC Marines lay dead or dying outside the hangar, all seemingly wounded while trying to buy the two Spartans time to escape and get to Quezon.

"How okay are you?" Carris asked. "Think you could help get the Marines that are still alive on board?"

"Of course," Kerensa replied, unstrapping herself.

Carris lowered the Pelican and allowed Kerensa to dismount and start carrying wounded soldiers on board, using the Pelican's medpack to stabilize them for travel. There were only seven soldiers that were still alive, and once Kerensa had loaded them up, she strapped herself in the Co-pilot's seat and Carris took off.

She angled the ship upwards and pushed the engines as far as they would go.

It took them fifteen minutes to break atmosphere, and once they did, they sent a blanket distress signal to all ships in the area.

"UNSC Fleet this is Spartan-137, I have a critically injured Spartan and seven Marines in even worse condition. Requesting immediate docking and medical attention." Several seconds of silence ensued.

"This is the UNSC Stalwart Dawn; you have clearance to dock in our hangar. We have the facilities to Cryo freeze all passengers aboard your ship. We have to head back to Earth anyway to refuel, rearm, and refit; we're no use here anymore."

"Roger," Carris said. "We're coming in for a landing."

Carris angled the Pelican towards the open docking bay of _The Stalwart Dawn_. It only took them a couple of minutes to reach it, and as soon as they were inside the bay, she opened the hatch and medics ran on board.

"Our med bay has been depressurized ever since we got hit," one of the medics told them. "But we can take them to the Cryo chambers and freeze them until we get back to Earth. They have better facilities there than we do anyway."

"Thank you," Carris said. All of the Marines were quickly unloaded and taken to the Cryo chambers, and Kerensa was left leaning against the back of the Pelican.

"Thank you Carris," she said, "I wouldn't have gone if you hadn't forced me to."

"You're welcome," Carris told her. She reached out hesitantly, resting her hand on Kerensa's shoulder. She knew that between the armor and the pain, there was no way that Kerensa could feel it, but she could clearly see it. And it made Carris feel better to do it. "Please take care of yourself."

"Thank you, you take care of yourself too. And be careful in Quezon."

"Thanks," Carris replied. She let her hand slip off of Kerensa's shoulder and drop to her side, watching as her fellow Spartan turned and walked towards the Cryo chambers. Just before Kerensa turned the corner, Carris called out to her. Kerensa turned to look at her, no doubt curious as to why she had called out.

Carris raised her hand to the front of her helmet, touching three fingers to it roughly where her mouth was. Kerensa paused for a moment, before returning the gesture for a smile. She then turned and continued onward towards the Cryo chambers.

Carris waited until she could no longer see her, and then closed the hatch and returned to the cockpit. She quickly started the Pelican and took off, heading back to the warring planet below.

It didn't take her long to hit the atmosphere, and since she was headed straight for Quezon, it only took her roughly half an hour to reach the outer limits of the city.

She knew that there was no point in reporting in. they were expected to be able to handle the situation on their own, and any attempt to contact Fred now might result in him becoming distracted during a firefight.

As Carris approached the heart of the city, her sensors picked up a Phantom dropship's signature of to her right just as she spotted it herself. She banked towards it.

Carris was nearly in firing range, and booted up the chain gun. As she took aim at the Phantom in front of her, her control panel lit up with warnings.

There was a second Phantom off to her left that had started to fire at her. _It's a trap, they set me up,_ she thought. Strangely though, the first Phantom wasn't shooting at her.

 _It's shooting at the other Phantom,_ she realized. _This could be some sort of resistance within the city that's managed to capture some Covenant tech._

She quickly turned and opened up on the second Phantom with her chain gun. She watched as the pilot made a quick threat assessment and switched its plasma cannon's fire over to the other Phantom.

After only ten seconds or so, Carris's high explosive rounds hit something critical, and she watched as the Phantom exploded spectacularly in midair. She looked around for the Phantom that had helped her, and was horrified to discover that it was going down too.

As she watched, a lone figure jumped out of the far side of the craft. It was moving away from the rapidly descending phantom, but at a rapid pace. Carris watched as it slammed into a building next to the one the Phantom had crashed into.

 _That was a Spartan._

Carris immediately made her way to way over to the building and landed on the roof as quickly as possible. She shut the Pelican down and sprinted out the back, heading for roof entrance to the building. The Spartan had landed six floors down, and Carris sprinted down flight after flight of stairs until she reached the floor she needed.

Carris saw the other Spartan as soon as she opened the door and left the stairwell. _How the hell did James get down here?_ She wondered. She linked her suit with his and pulled up his vitals. _He's out cold, but he's alive._ She looked at the window he had flown through, the concrete corner he had bounced off of clearly visible and sporting a person sized missing chunk. _He's lucky to have survived that hit at all._

She approached him and used the software in her suit to unlock his armor. Before she unlocked him, she checked his armor's bio readouts to make sure that he didn't have any serious injuries that she was going to make worse my moving him. When she was sure that he didn't, Carris crouched beside him and unlocked his armor.

She pulled a stim out of the compartment on her thigh and injected it into a port in the armor on his thigh, then watched as he quickly regained consciousness. He looked around and rolled over, getting himself into a crouch before popping the seals on his helmet and removing it.

As he took off his helmet, Carris became immediately concerned. His armor readouts had mentioned potential head trauma, but nothing like what she was seeing now. The inside of his faceplate and most of his face were covered in blood that looked like it stemmed from his nose, which was quite badly broken.

James wiped the blood from his eyes and looked around, his gaze quickly locking on to Carris.

"Carris," he said. "What are you doing here?"

"There's something in the city that the Covenant want, and Kerensa and I were tasked with stopping them from retrieving it."

"Where is Kerensa?"

"We came under heavy fire on the way here and she was injured. She's in orbit on a ship headed for Earth. Why are you here? Where are John and Linda?"

"When we were on the station, my thruster pack got hit and I was blown off the station. I was lucky enough to run into an abandoned, um…" he trailed off, trying to find the word.

"Phantom?" Carris offered.

"Yeah, Phantom. I managed to get it running and get down here. Were you the one in the Pelican?"

"Yes, thank you. I wouldn't have made it if you hadn't distracted the other Phantom."

James waved her off. He tried to get to his feet, but stumbled and fell down hard. Half a ton of man and armor don't fall gracefully. He seemed to have completely forgotten about his helmet.

"You're concussed." Carris told him matter-of-factly.

"I know," James said dejectedly. "But I was really hoping that I wasn't."

"Well you are." Carris went to reach for her rifle on her back, and only then realized that she was only carrying a pistol and her knife. _That was sloppy of me; did I really not grab anything from the Pelican's arsenal before I came own here?_

"I'll need a weapon," James said as she helped him up. She supported a good bit of his weight as they made their way back to the stair well. James wiped the blood off of the inside of his visor and putting his helmet back on.

They reached the roof fairly quickly, and wasted no time in getting back inside the Pelican. Once inside, both grabbed an assault rifle and a full combat load of ammo.

When they were both armed to the teeth, Carris and James made their way back up to the cockpit and started the Pelican up again. They took off quickly and headed towards the center of the city.

"What did you say was going on here?" James asked.

 _That concussion is worse than I thought, it might take him two or three days to fully recover,_ Carris thought worriedly.

"The Covenant troops here are searching for something, and I was sent to find out what it was and stop them from retrieving it."

"Copy," James said, slipping into radio lingo. This did nothing to assuage Carris's concerns about his cognitive abilities.

As they flew towards where they suspected the largest concentration of Covenant activity was, James spotted something.

"ODSTs," he said. "Well, drop pods." He pointed out the viewport.

Carris looked over to where he was pointing and saw a full company's worth of SOEIVs, seemingly abandoned. She banked towards the pods, and they quickly reached them. Carris set down on a nearby rooftop, spotting two of the abandoned pods on a nearby rooftop.

They shut the Pelican down and got out, quickly heading down to street level. They looked around at the pods, and quickly determined that they needed to figure where the Company had gone.

"Let's investigate the two pods on the roof," Carris suggested. "They most likely belonged to snipers, and snipers are never far from the action."

"Sounds good," James said. They were on their way to the rooftop, when Carris heard it; the distinctive whine of a Phantom Dropship. Both Spartans quickly ducked into separate pods and closed the hatches.

Carris could still hear the whine of the Phantom, but now it was muffled. She heard it pass overhead and concluded that it was on its way to investigate the Pelican.

The Phantom hovered off in the direction of their Pelican for several minutes; likely deciding on the best course of action.

After several long minutes, Carris heard it open up with its Plasma Turrets. _There goes our ride out of here,_ she thought. Then she thought about off of the munitions inside, and began doing damage estimates in her head based off of the amount of fuel in the main and reserve tanks, as well as the twenty rockets that had been placed in there by the helpful marines.

 _That explosion is going to –_ a huge shockwave hit the pod, followed immediately by an equally large amount of noise. The whine of the Phantom's engines had stopped, and just as Carris wondered if it had left, she heard an impact, followed by another large explosion.

The heat from the plasma based explosion could be felt through both the pods heat shielding hull and her armor's temperature regulating layer.

Carris now heard the sound that she had been waiting to hear, as the building began to fall. She stepped out of the pod and saw that James was exiting his as well.

Carris looked around and was quickly able to get a rough estimate of what had happened. The Phantom had destroyed the Pelican, but hadn't counted on the unusually large shockwave; the force of the blast had knocked out the Phantom's engines which caused the Covenant ship to smash into the building across the street from the building that Carris had landed the Pelican on. The force and heat from both blasts now caught up with the buildings' support structures, and both then proceeded to crumble and fall.

The rubble had stopped roughly three meters short of their pods on either side, prompting Carris to wonder if the pods could have withstood that kind of impact.

"Now what?" James asked.

"We should still investigate the pods on the roof," Carris said. She started for the building, with James a few steps behind her. Both Spartans had their assault rifles at the ready.

They made their way up the rubble from the fallen buildings and quickly reached the rooftops, after which they made their way to the pods. Once there, they discovered that there was a weapon inside each. Carris grabbed a BR55 battle rifle, and James found what appeared to be a modified SRS99D-S2 AM sniper rifle. The two pods had plenty of ammunition for each, and the Spartans happily took it.

"Where to now?" James asked. "We have no idea which way they went."

 _His sentences are getting longer, that's a good sign; even if he is still using Basic English,_ Carris thought.

"We'll scout the area and find some sign of them, because Helljumpers don't do anything quietly, and when we find them, we'll find the Covenant too. Those two tend to go hand in hand."

"I see something," James said. He pointed to the edge of a rooftop roughly a hundred meters away. There was a large blackened section that Carris felt foolish for having missed.

They jogged over to it, and it was only when they got to the edge that they stopped dead in their tracks. The sheet of black, reflective glass below them covered the street edge to edge, and stretched on for over two hundred meters.

"Shit," Carris said, spotting the Wraiths at the end of the street and putting it together. "They're all dead."

James sat down heavily on the edge of the rooftop, next to a large group of spent shell casings from a standard issue UNSC sniper rifle. He picked one up and squeezed it in his hand as he stared down into the reflective coating on the street below; a reflective coating made up of over a hundred of the UNSC's finest soldiers.

"Wait, look!" he said excitedly, pointing towards the far edge of the roof. Carris saw it now; the thin dark rope all ODSTs were assigned for rappelling in emergencies. It was fixed over a spot of blackened and glassy rooftop.

"This was put here after," James said.

"Which means that somewhere, somebody made it out of this alive," Carris said, finishing his thought. "We have to find them; we can't just leave them to fend for themselves in this city. Helljumpers are tough, but no one's invincible."

Carris crouched down and grasped the rope firmly, hoping that it would support the weight of a Spartan. "We had better get started."


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

 **0915 Hours, August 29, 2552 (Military Calendar)/Epsilon Eridani System, Unknown Soldier's SOEIV, planet Reach**

Jason woke up slowly, not wanting to move. He slowly looked around the inside of the pod; trying to piece together what had happened, and where he was. It took him a few seconds but it all came back to him. He sat there for a brief second, horrified beyond belief at the events of the days before.

The death of his company, his abandonment by his best friend, the deaths of the other soldiers that to him would always remain nameless, and finally, the death of the lone Marine. The marine was what really got to him; that one man, having to hold off on his own despite overwhelming odds, but finally being overrun. He had a family, he had parents; people who would miss and mourn him. Of course, if this war was as bad as it seemed, he may not have any family any more.

Jason tried his best to push such thoughts from his mind, trying his best instead to focus on what he had to do. _I have to get back to the room where I stashed my supplies._ Jason unstrapped himself and looked around at the interior of the pod once again. After a moment's calculation, he removed his pack and set it on the floor in front of him.

Upon opening it, he was delighted to discover that it was nearly empty. Jason started requisitioning ammunition and rations from the pod's supply, quickly filling the pack to the weight that he knew he could carry for the distance that he had to. Thanks to the emptiness of his pack he was able to carry nearly twice the standard ammunition for his assault rifle, SMG, and shotgun. He reattached his pack and opened up the hatch.

Facing him was a small squad of grunts. He raised his rifle and opened fire, spraying the pack of five with a full magazine of rounds, and quickly dispatching them.

He heard the distinctive barks of jackals from off to his left. _Thank God I'm going right_ , he thought to himself as he sprinted away in his desired direction of travel. He made it about a hundred meters before they managed to get him in their line of sight.

Plasma bolts from the jackal's pistols splashed against the wall to his right, and on the ground by his feet. One round managed to hit him in the back of the leg, but it did nothing but lower his shields a hair. Within a few minutes he had managed to outrun them and completely tire himself out.

He checked his map again, and was happy to find that he was nearly a quarter of the way to the waypoint that he had set, indicating the location of the apartment that his things were stashed in.

He had walked for nearly an hour before he was forced to duck into a small building. He had spotted a patrol of Elites with at least two Ghosts providing heavy support. He felt fairly confident that he could set up a trap and take them all out, but it really wouldn't gain him anything. He decided to wait it out, but the wait quickly grew longer than he had anticipated.

The small patrol that he had initially spotted was only the beginning of an entire column of troops moving across the city. He counted as they passed, and it wasn't promising. Ten Wraiths, twenty Ghosts, more Elites, Jackals, and Grunts than he cared to count, and four Hunter pairs. _And that has to be less than a quarter of the troops stationed in the city. There's no way they would move any more than that across the city at once; they'd be too vulnerable._

The small army that passed him by had made him nervous, and he waited nearly half an hour after they passed before he deemed it safe enough to exit his shelter and continue on his way. After that incident though, the streets were empty, and he didn't run into any more resistance on his way back.

It took him two hours to get back, and it was dark out by the time he made it to the room. He was tired, and needed to get some rest before he made a move on whatever it was that was blocking the Comms signals. Jason pushed the desk against the door, broke out the dry rations he had scavenged from the drop pod, and ate in silence. He took his time; not wanting to upset his stomach, and not seeing any reason to rush.

 _It's pretty obvious that I'm going to be stuck here for a while, I might as well settle in._ he finished up his food and sealed the remnants in a large airtight container he had found so that the smell wouldn't give him away. _I guess this is home for now,_ he thought. With that single, somehow uplifting thought, he drifted off to sleep.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

 **0247 Hours, August , 2552 (Military Calendar)/Epsilon Eridani System, Unknown Building, planet Reach**

They were after him. They knew he was tired; he'd been running for hours and he had to stop soon. He pushed himself harder, but he was only able to run for another minute before he was finally forced to stop by a dark alleyway. _I don't like this_. He stepped away cautiously; forgetting about the Elites that had been chasing him, and focusing all of his attention on the darkness before him. Nothing happened for several seconds, and he held his breath. A pebble skidded across the pavement towards him from the darkened place he couldn't see. He went to raise his rifle and felt his heart sink as he remembered that in his haste to get away from the Elites he had discarded it.

He reached for his shotgun, but remembered as he grasped it that he had run out of shells hours ago. Reluctantly he pulled his sidearm. He was now glad that he had swapped his SOCOM rounds for the standard pistol rounds because with them he might actually have a chance. There was a shimmer in the air next to him, but he ignored it. It had no relevance to the Elites bearing down on him.

But the shimmer bothered him subconsciously, his exhausted mind latching on to such a trivial detail and stressing over it, obsessing over it, trying its hardest to distract him. Where was it coming from? Why was it there? Why was it only there? It wasn't nearly hot enough out for it to be caused by anything natural. He pushed the thoughts from his mind; attempting to focus all of his energy on the gun in his hand, but failing.

His subconscious mind suddenly remembered what he knew about Covenant tactics and made him violently aware of this new and extremely credible threat. His body turned, nearly without his consent, as he redirected the pistol towards the cloaked and shielded Elite… Too late. The gun was wrenched from his hand and tossed to the side.

"Shit," he exclaimed, reaching for his knife. He grasped only air where it should have been, and he recalled that he had left it buried in the shoulder of one of the Elites chasing him.

He threw a punch, but it didn't connect. He saw the tip of the plasma rifle charge, ready to fire in an instant.

There was a flash of blue.

Jason woke up in a cold sweat. It was pitch black outside; and he still felt far too tired to get up and be productive yet. He checked the time and discovered that he had only been asleep for a few hours. After a few minutes of lying there in fear, he decided that he shouldn't let the dream get to him, and did his best to drift off to sleep.

He woke sometime later to sunlight streaming in through the window and reluctantly rose and prepared himself for the day.

 _I have to do some serious recon._ If he could size up the Covenant threat in the city, maybe learn patrol patterns and figure out ambush tactics, then he could be a huge asset to whoever came to the rescue next. Because two Companies of Helljumpers didn't just go missing without higher-ups asking questions. They were too valuable an asset to lose.

He armored up and put on his pack, choosing to leave all but a few ration bars and some ammo in the room. He wasn't going to be gone long; he just needed to grab a few things to fortify his position. He would need a solid operating base to work out of if he was going to be doing recon.

Jason grabbed his gun, shifted the desk out of the way, and left.

The first place he stopped by was the supermarket next door to his apartment, grabbing some canned food that he knew wouldn't smell too badly and risk giving away his position. As he was preparing to leave, a Grunt wandered in.

Jason flattened himself against the shelves just out of sight. He waited several minutes, watching as the Grunt looked through the store and seeming to know that something wasn't right, but not able to place what it was. After five minutes, Jason was able to convince himself that it was alone. He waited a little while longer, and when it turned to leave he stepped out of hiding.

Jason sprinted silently across the short distance separating them, reached down, and snapped its neck. He dragged it inside the store for a moment, so that he would have time to implement his new plan.

Jason took a moment to remove the methane tank and combat harness from the dead Unggoy and left them stashed in a darkened corner of the store. This made the grunt a little lighter, reducing its weight to a more manageable level. This allowed him to drag the dead Grunt all the way back up to his apartment building. He opened the door to the apartment two down from him, one that the Covenant would have to pass in order to reach his.

Jason left the Grunt on its stomach and gently placed a grenade underneath it; rigging it to detonate if it was rolled off. _That should give me some warning before I have company._ He thought.

Jason went back to his room to eat lunch and take a break. The grunt had been heavy, easily a hundred Kilos. It wore him out to have to drag it as far as he did.

The meal was decent; canned food was only ever so good. _The food in the mess hall is better than this crap,_ he complained to himself. _Oh well, at least I don't have to cut into my rations._

He finished his meal, sealed the garbage in his container, and donned all of his gear again. As he reached for the handle to the door, he heard a noise down the hallway. He paused, his hand inches from the handle. Jason was frozen; doing his best to avoid making any noise to alert them to his presence for a moment before realizing what a ridiculous notion it was. Their sensors would be able to pick him up long before they would be able to hear him; though he likely still had quite a bit of time before that happened.

They were still too far away from his room for their sensors to pick him up, which was the only reason that they went inside the room down the hall to investigate the stripped down dead grunt.

The first explosion shook the walls and nearly caused him to drop his rifle in shock. _Surely the blast would have…_ before he could finish this thought; a second explosion rocked the building even harder than the first. This one was slightly different in pitch, and nearly overrode the sound dampening unit in his helmet. Jason gripped his rifle tighter and tensed up, ready to move.

He flung open the door and turned the corner, raising his rifle to quench any opposition while it was still stunned from the blast. The hallway was empty, save for the debris that lined the floor from the blown out wall. He moved down the narrow hallway, turning and facing the room when he came to the first opening, which just so happened to be a brand new hole in the previously intact wall. As he stepped inside the small room his trap had been in he saw just how much carnage his little device had caused.

Everything was coated in the neon blue blood of the little creature, but was also darkened by the smoke and soot from the fragmentation device. There were several unrecognizable pieces of what used to be another squad of grunts littering the room and hall. There was nothing left to give him any trouble.

He turned to survey the damage; stepping over the large pile of rubble in the hallway. As he did he heard a groan.

Jason fixed the muzzle of his rifle on the ground where the noise had come from and began kicking off debris. It only took him a moment to uncover the top half of a badly wounded Elite lying on the floor.

For the rubble to have fallen on top of him the way it had, the Elite had to have been in the hallway outside of the room. That also explained how he had avoided being shredded into little pieces in the blast. _Of course, he would have been better off if he had been blown to pieces,_ he mused; _would have saved him a lot of pain._ The chunks of wall that had flown into the Elite in the blast had downed his shield and hit him so hard that several sections of his armor had been knocked off of him.

His helmet and both shoulder coverings had come off, and the armor on his chest wasn't faring well, being cracked in several places. He was bleeding from a gash above his eye, and he tried, and failed, to summon up the strength to wipe away the blood.

. . .

The Sangheili warrior looked up at the filth standing above him, and knew that there was no way that he was going to be able to fight his way out of this. He tried to take a quick inventory, but he felt some pain as he attempted to look down at his body. There would be more pain if he completed that motion, of that he was certain. But there had to be some way to kill this human, to die a glorious death, to ensure that his death was not in vain.

He could feel a wound above his eye leaking blood, but ignored it for now. The human was staring at him, but not moving. Perhaps he was going to try and save him? _Why did I wonder such a thing?_ He asked himself. _I shouldn't be hoping this measly human will save me; they are dirt beneath my feet, and if he saves me then I will be indebted to him, which would bring shame on my clan…_ no, he should be hoping to kill him, not be saved by him.

 _I want the pain to go away._ The blood from the cut above his eye was beginning to become a problem. It was coming down past his brow, obscuring the vision in his eye. He reached up to wipe it away and only then discovered why he could not feel his feet. A lancing pain shot down his spine, ending around the middle of his back. All feeling in his body ended at the same point.

His back was broken. He wasn't going anywhere for a long time. He would likely be crippled for the rest of his life. That was most definitely not honorable. There was no way that he could ever live that down; it would always hang over his head. He would never be good enough, never be able to do the things he should be able to, and even his children (if he had any) would either mock him or be ashamed of him. _I want to die. I want this nightmare to end. I want it to all be over, so that I may leave this life and enter another, better one._

"Kill… me" he managed to speak. Though he had been as clear as he could be, his words were mangled and unrecognizable, and there was no guarantee that the human would understand him anyway. He looked up at him, though it caused him great shame, and made a face that was as near to pleading as he could manage.

. . .

Jason watched the thoughts flash through the Elite's mind. He could see every change in emotion as it happened. It was an incredible thing to watch. It was rare that a human was ever able to witness any emotion on the face of a Sangheili warrior, other than rage, and he made sure that his helmets camera recorded it all.

His mandibles moved as he uttered something so garbled and quiet that it wasn't even recognizable as another language. Jason saw that he knew it wasn't understandable. The Elite's eyes flashed upwards, seeking out his behind his faceplate. He made a face that so shocked Jason, that for a moment he was unable to do anything but stare.

After several moments had passed, Jason shut off his helmet's systems and removed it. The Elite looked up at him with renewed hope in his eyes, but still with the same pleading look. Jason knew what he wanted, but found it hard to believe.

He set his rifle on the ground, and pulled out his pistol. With no helmet on, Jason knew that the round would go straight through. With the knowledge he gained from years as a sniper he rested the muzzle of the gun against the Elite's head in the spot he knew would do the most damage, and gently squeezed the trigger.

The round that exited the barrel, entered the Elite's head, and moved several inches inside before the delayed high explosive went off, blowing out the back of the Elite's skull and granting him an immediate release from the pain that had previously bound him.

Jason stared down at the crippled body of the Elite and sighed heavily. _This whole war is pointless,_ he thought, _Constant bloodshed day after day, and for what?_ The only reason that he killed was to avoid being killed himself. That alone was reason enough for him to fight. But the Covenant, every single soldier he killed, they had reasons to fight too. They had families, lives, friends, a home; they had everything he had, and more. So why did they hate each other so much? They were basically the same, if you were willing to overlook the differences in their cultures and species.

 _I can't afford to think like this, I'm going to be forced to kill a lot of them in the next…_ he sighed, _until I'm rescued._ If he thought about them as anything other than an enemy right now, then he might not have the resolve to pull the trigger when the time came, and that could cost him his life, or the lives of people around him.

Jason stood up and slowly walked back to his room, troubled by thoughts of the family of the Sangheili warrior that he had just shot in cold blood. When he reached his room, he glanced out of his window, realizing only now that it was beginning to get dark out. Setting up the room and trap had taken a decent chunk out of his day, and served to severely exhaust him.

He sighed inwardly, not looking forward to having to sleep. But he knew that he would have to. There was no point in staying awake, he would need his rest, and he really didn't want to try and clean up the mess that had made with the improvised trap. He sat down on his bed heavily, thinking hard about what he had been through so far since he had landed. This was, by far, his least successful deployment.

There was no doubt in Jason's mind that the mission was FUBAR, and there was nothing that he could do to change that. But he hadn't quite resigned himself to giving up just yet. Jason rested his assault rifle against the wall by his bed and picked up his shotgun. He walked over to the window, staring out it as he held the gun close to his chest. There was some sort of tension in the air. The kind of tension that comes from knowing that you're alone and in trouble.

 _Oh well,_ he thought. Jason walked back to the bed, tossing his shotgun on the desk as he went. He sat down heavily, exhaling as he did so. He looked around for a few minutes, thinking about the day's events, before making up his mind.

He rose from the bed and crossed to the door, checking to make sure that the deadbolt was securely locked. He then lifted his shotgun off the desk, slinging it across his back before slowly sliding what was easily a two hundred pound desk in front of the door. Once he had accomplished his task, he pulled the chain on the small emergency light that was illuminating the small space, ridding the room of the dim glow that it had had before.

He chinned a switch in his helmet, turning on the tactical light on the side of his head. He turned to the bed, unslinging his shotgun as he approached it. He rested it against the wall with his assault rifle, his SMG, and his tactical pack, which both sat next to the bed. Once they were propped up against the wall, he removed his helmet and switched it to sentry mode so that it'd wake him if it detected anything.

Removing his helmet also deactivated the experimental energy shield that had previously surrounded him; a spinoff of the hugely effective energy shield that the Spartan IIs had. In addition, the new and experimental ODST armor was powered by generators fueled by movement. So as long as he was moving, the suit was recharging the built in high capacity battery that powered his shields. Despite the new tech they had stuffed in his suit though, the Spartan's armor could still take a hundred times more punishment than his could. He wished they'd let him use it in the field instead of having to downgrade to maintain secrecy.

Once Jason had set his helmet, he climbed into bed with the rest of his armor and his boots still on. He proceeded to drift towards sleep; comfortable in the knowledge that his large combat knife was still strapped upside down beneath his arm and his pistol was still on his thigh.

As he was about to finally close his eyes and rest, he heard a creak from elsewhere in the building that he was currently trying in vain to fall asleep in. _That's the building settling for the night; it is quite old after all, and there was that explosion earlier, could be debris shifting._ He reasoned with himself. _Or it could not be that._

This last thought compelled him to put sleeping off until later, and get back up now. He uncovered himself, throwing the blankets to the side. As Jason stood, he quietly picked his helmet up off of his pack, switching it from sentry to the HUD as he donned it. He decided to forgo turning on the helmet's light for now, instead choosing to use his helmet's night vision capabilities to navigate around the room. He picked up his pack, silently attaching it to the clasps that made it an extension of his armor.

Once the bag was securely fastened, Jason reached down and retrieved his MA5C, choosing the assault rifle over the SMG due to the higher level of firepower that it offered. He quietly stepped in front of the door as he checked to make sure it was loaded...

. . .

Now Jason looked around the small living room at the two Spartans that sat with him in silence cleaning their armor and weapons, and realized how much of an accomplishment it was that he was still here at all. _At least now that I'm not on my own I might be able to make a bigger difference._ He grudgingly acknowledged.

Jason felt slightly out of place, and realized that it was because he was the only one wearing armor in the room. He quickly removed it and laid it out on the floor to be cleaned later like the Spartans had.

He finished cleaning the shotgun quickly and switched to his assault rifle. That took a little longer to clean, due to the more extensive disassembly that was required. He kept stealing glances at his new companions as he worked, and it occurred to him at one point that if they were half the soldiers that they were rumored to be, then they wouldn't have any trouble spotting his looks.

He stopped for several minutes, but then found himself glancing back towards them once again.

"You don't have to continue to try and be discreet," Carris told him, "I understand that you're curious. Have you ever met a Spartan before?"

"Oh, ah, no… I haven't." Jason admitted, "Only heard stories, and seen a couple of short clips of you fighting in battle. Your combat skill is something to be admired. Everything about you is impressive."

"Everything about us is a result of our training." Carris said, in an almost spiteful manner. "While it may be true that we're the best of the best, it's a direct result of our upbringing, and not anything that we should take too much pride in."

"Not everything can be taught, and you would have been impressive even if you had never fought before." Jason replied quickly, not realizing until after the words had left his mouth that he had meant her looks. She was staring at him intently. He quickly switched to staring at the disassembled assault rifle in his hands; suddenly forgetting how to put it back together.

It was obvious to him that she hadn't realized what he meant and it was bothering her. How did she not get that obvious of a line? _Could she seriously never have been complimented for anything other than her combat abilities?_ He asked himself. _She's distractingly attractive, there's no way. But then again, how many people have had the chance to see her out of her armor?_

"What do you mean?" Carris asked him inquisitively after a moment; clearly genuine in her curiosity.

"Um, I mean…" Jason stammered, trying his hardest to regain control of his mouth and failing spectacularly. "You're extremely pretty." His eyes shot down to the floor. _Jesus I'm thirty four, why is this so embarrassing to me? I think she might be older than me too._ He stopped himself there, which was good, because he needed all of his mental faculties around him for when Carris next spoke.

"You think that I'm attractive?" she asked him, clearly shocked. She looked down at herself, somehow not comprehending what it was that Jason saw in her. That raised a question in his mind. Because even teenagers have a perception of themselves being attractive or not, so how young was this girl when she was inducted into the military and distracted from these normal thoughts?

"Well, of course I do." He said slowly, and then hesitantly added, "How… old were you when you started training?"

"That's classified," James spoke up. Both Carris and Jason jumped, having completely forgotten that he was there. He had been silent thus far, and Jason suspected that the only reason that he had spoken up was that he didn't trust Carris not to reveal confidential information in her current state of mind.

"Oh shut up," Carris told him, "He's not going to tell anyone, will you?" she looked at him, and he saw steel in her eyes.

"Of course not," he said hurriedly, "I was just asking, you don't have to tell me if it's classified."

"Seven," she said. "I was removed from my family and began training when I was seven."

"Jesus, they failed to mention that," Jason whispered quietly.

"What do you mean?" She asked.

He froze, realizing that he had almost let something extremely confidential slip. No one was supposed to know about the Spartan IV program until ONI went public about it. All of the recruits had received a bit of history on the Spartan IIs, though it seemed that they had skimmed over that part.

"In the press releases about you guys, they never mentioned anything like that," He lied; hoping they wouldn't suspect anything. He tried redirecting the question. "How old are you?"

"I don't know," Carris said, appearing to accept his previous answer. "We didn't really celebrate birthdays, so it never really mattered. So I have no idea when my birthday is or how old I am, though I'm sure it's on file somewhere in some secret facility far from prying eyes. But I'm probably somewhere around thirty eight to forty three, I don't know where exactly."

"You look a lot younger than that," he said, once again losing control of his mouth. "I'm going to stop talking now."

Of course, he had already known a good bit of that information. But hearing it from them in person made it… different. It felt more personal, going beyond the simple lecture they had received on the first generation of truly successful super soldiers. He did his best to push it from his mind for now; he had to stay focused on what he was doing.

They continued cleaning their weapons and armor in silence for several minutes, allowing Jason the time he needed to finish up his assault rifle and his pistol, before starting on his helmet. Between the fall he had taken the night before, and the sniper bolt that went through his shoulder causing him to fall to the ground in the alley, something had come loose or broken somewhere in his armor and none of the electronics in his armor seemed to work.

He fiddled with the panel around the area where the battery was housed and finally managed to take it off. Once the panel was removed, he immediately spotted the problem. There was a small fuse that should have been held in place by a metal bar, but the bar's hinge had snapped and the fuse had fallen out. It was a simple repair, only requiring a strip of adhesive to become fully functional again. _Lucky the fuse didn't break,_ he mused. _That would have been quite the problem._

He put his armor back on quickly and booted it up, delighted to see it function perfectly once again. He removed his helmet and set it on the floor beside him as he opened his pack. He fished around for a moment and finally wound up flipping it upside down and emptying it on the floor. He looked over the supplies in dismay. He had emptied the pack the day before when he got back to the room, and only now saw that he only bothered to toss a couple of magazines of ammunition and some food cans back inside.

Jason groaned inwardly, now forced to admit that he would need to go back to the room that he had spent so much time in before. He sighed as he tossed the few items that he had back into the bag. He looked over at the two Spartans again. James and Carris had just finished reattaching James's armor plates and James was picking up his weapons.

"Someone will need to go on patrol," James said, "We need to know more about the area."

"It would make the most sense if you went." Jason said. "You're already armored up, and you would be better suited to take care of yourself in any eventuality than I would be."

"But how would Carris get her armor back on without my help?" James asked.

"I can help her, and if I can't manage it, then you can help when you get back."

"Alright." James conceded. He checked his magazines and glanced out the window before making his way to the door. "I'll be back in an hour."

After he left, Jason sat on the floor and watched Carris finish up the small adjustments she was making to her armor. It only took her a few minutes more to finish up and become ready to put it all back on again.

"So how can I help?" he asked. She looked at him and started giving him instructions, mostly involving picking up what he discovered to be extremely heavy plates of armor and holding them in place against her while she worked at securing them.

"What are these plates made of?" he grunted.

"Titanium Alloy," Carris told him. His only response was another grunt of exertion. His shoulder was killing him, but he desperately wanted to impress this woman for some reason. They had attached the back panel with the fusion reactor in it, and they had gotten the legs of her armor attached. The next thing she had him do were her arms, which only took a few minutes. It was when he got around to lifting up her chest piece that he ran into problems.

He could hardly lift it, but somehow managed. It had to weigh over a hundred and fifty Kilos, and he wasn't sure he could hold it up for as long as she needed him to. He got it up to her chest level, and managed to get it pressed up against her. Thankfully she secured it in seconds, because right as it was fastened in place, his shoulder issued a spike of pain that traveled the entire length of his body, causing his knees to give out beneath him. Jason issued a sharp cry of pain as he hit the ground… shoulder first.

He rolled off of his injured side; now regretting having left that shoulder plate in the room he had woken up in earlier. _If I'd had it on, this probably wouldn't hurt so much._

"Are you alright?" Carris asked him, squatting down beside him.

"Shoulder," was all he managed to say. She quickly began removing the armor sections on his upper body. Once they were off she undid the black bodysuit and pulled it down to his waist, revealing the nasty looking injury on his shoulder for the first time. As she laid eyes on it, Jason could hear a quiet hiss of breath, which prompted him to look down and see it for himself.

As Jason looked down at it, he realized for the first time just how bad an injury it was. The skin immediately surrounding the tiny hole was charred black, and he sincerely hoped that the damage on the inside wasn't as bad as it looked. He also realized now that, most likely due to the exertion of lifting her armor, he had ripped something open on the inside, and it was no longer cauterized all the way through. He was bleeding out the back of his shoulder fairly steadily.

"God damn it," he said, looking down on it. "We need to get back to my old room; I left a lot of supplies there. And I know where to get a lot more food, medicine, and ammunition. As much as I hate taking it from there."

"Where?" Carris asked.

"A Company of ODSTs," Jason said.

"We already found them, the ones hit by the Wraiths." She glanced down at his chest plate where the sheath for his knife was and found it missing. She quietly added, "You were there weren't you?"

"Yeah," he sighed. "That was my Company. But those aren't the Helljumpers I mentioned a second ago. There's another company whose men were still more or less intact when I found them. They were ambushed by Ghosts and trapped on the street. They didn't stand a chance."

"Another one?" Carris whispered, almost inaudibly.

"Yeah, another one," he repeated. "I found them a couple days ago and used their supplies to stay alive this long. I bet that they would have a lot more medical supplies there."

"Yes, they would." Carris agreed, "But until then…"

She pulled out a container of Biofoam and sprayed it into the wound, sealing it up nicely for the next six hours. It stung, but he gritted his teeth through the pain and waited until the painful effects wore off and he was left with the sort of blissful numbness that it otherwise afforded.

"Thank you," he said.

"And thank you," she replied.

"For what? What did I do but complicate your mission? You two didn't need to have to babysit me, yet here I am." He said resentfully. He hated that he was getting in their way and slowing them down so much.

"Thank you for telling me that I was pretty," Carris said. "No one has ever told me that before, it was a very unexpected thing to hear. I've never really thought about myself that way."

"I don't know why nobody has told you that you were pretty," Jason said. "It probably has something to do with you being in your armor all the time. Then the people that do see you are intimidated by the fact that you're a Spartan and they're afraid of you."

"But not you," she said. "Why weren't you afraid like them?"

"Well to be honest, it's been a rough couple of days and I wasn't thinking entirely clearly, and it sort of just slipped out. I didn't mean to say anything at all."

"Well I'm glad you did." She said. She was still leaning over him; closer than Jason felt comfortable with, and he was extremely aware of her hand lingering softly on his exposed shoulder. _She said that I'm the only one that's ever told her she's pretty, what if she feels like she owes me something in return? I should really use this opportunity to teach her proper social etiquette around normal people._ Jason found himself wondering then when she would ever get the chance to use her social skills, and found the notion of trying to teach her any to be slightly ridiculous. Certainly there was no foreseeable end to this war; and there was no way that they were going to let her stop fighting if she was still useful to them.

Suddenly, Jason found himself hating the government that he was fighting for. Who the hell were they to take kids away from their parents and train them to fight, to never give them a chance to live out their lives the way they wanted to, to deprive them of the simple joy of celebrating their birthday? A government that would do that wasn't a government that he wanted to serve anymore.

Although joining the Covenant wasn't exactly an option either. They would kill him on sight. _And I can't just let her stay. They won't let her leave, she could expose them, turn the public opinion against them. They're not going to let any of the Spartans get out alive._ He couldn't let that happen to her. Of course, he couldn't and wouldn't stop her if that was what she wanted.

 _I have to figure out a way to get out. And maybe get her out with me if she wants to go. At the very least figure out how to make sure that she knows she could be leading a different life._ It was only then that he realized that he had completely zoned out while he was thinking and had been staring at her for quite some time now.

He made up his mind. He would get her out if she wanted to go. At the very least he would figure out a way to get out himself. He could set up a new life for himself somewhere, and he knew exactly where that somewhere would be. And he owed it to her. If she hadn't been there last night, he'd by long dead.

One way or another he knew she was going to die serving the UNSC, and that wasn't a life anyone deserved to have to live. At the very least she should have time to live a real life with hobbies and a future that didn't involve killing, and maybe even a family someday. Now all he had to do was convince her. _Nothing short of a miracle is going to convince this woman she should make a change though. A miracle or,_ he realized, an idea forming, _a big enough push. I just hope it's enough._

. . .

Carris stared down into Jason's eyes, unsure of what to do. There was just something about him, whether it was his dark brown eyes or his disarming smile that caused her to feel closer to him than she'd felt to anyone outside the Spartan II program before. All she knew was that somehow she felt closer to him than she should, and was making no move to prevent herself from the steadily growing sense of attachment she felt.

Jason looked like he was having some sort of great moral struggle. He maintained eye contact, but he looked conflicted and she could feel his heartbeat increasing beneath her fingers. _Why is he so worked up? What has him upset?_

She could only remember seeing someone this upset once before. It was after a sparring match with a trainer. He had tried to pin her, but overcommitted himself to the maneuver. She reversed it and threw him off her a bit too hard. He flew into a post, and severed two vertebrae. He died instantly. Afterward she had been crying outside the barracks when Dr. Halsey spotted her.

She had looked this conflicted when she had saw her, but he had walked away and left her to sort out her own demons. What could Jason be so upset about then? Was he going to walk away like Mendez had? _Wait, why do I care? I've only known him for a few hours, I shouldn't care this much about what he does._

She was suddenly distracted as she saw the look on his face change. This look was one she was much more familiar with; resolve, mixed with resignation. She had seen it on the faces of Marines who they knew that they were going to die, but still charged around the corner anyway because it would buy their friends more time. But what had he resolved to do?

. . .

Jason laid on his back and stared up at the face of the beautiful woman that was leaning over him and made up his mind. He reached up with his good arm and firmly grasped the back of Carris's neck. In one fluid motion, Jason pulled himself upwards and connected his lips with hers.

He kissed her softly, thankful that she hadn't killed him yet. Of course, she wasn't reacting either. It was entirely possible that she was too shocked to react.

Carris's lips were the softest he'd ever kissed, of course; he had only ever kissed a few girls before he threw himself into being the best soldier he could be; for the most part forgoing all such vices. _Except alcohol, you can't be sober as an ODST_. He felt her firm up her lips slightly. That was a good sign. It meant she probably wasn't going to kill him yet. She was already getting the hang of kissing, and he realized she was getting better by the second.

Carris seemed to be getting into it; she was enjoying it, and she wasn't pushing him away. God, he loved kissing her. He had only kissed her this once, and already he didn't know what he would do if he wasn't able to do it again.

Jason pulled away, not wanting to overwhelm her. It was entirely possible this was her first real kiss. He rested back on an elbow, nearly all of his energy gone, looking up at her. She looked like she had been hit by a train; her eyes were unfocused, she was panting, he could see her pulse throbbing in her neck, her lips were still slightly parted, and most of all, she was positively glowing. She looked happy and content, and like she vaguely wanted to do it again.

Carris looked down at him, meeting his eyes for the first time since he had kissed her.

"Thank you," Jason said.

"What? Why? For what?" Carris asked, seeming flustered.

"For not injuring me, which would have been well within your right," Jason said, hoping that she didn't do so retroactively.

"Why would I do that? That was amazing." Carris asked.

"Well we haven't exactly known each other for very long, but at the same I want to spend more time with you. I don't want to say goodbye after this mission."

"Neither do I now," Carris said. "But this isn't the time to talk about it."

"You're right." Jason said, "We need to maintain professional discipline on the mission, but I'd like to see you again after this is over."

"Me too," Carris agreed.

A few minutes later, James walked in and gave them the basic layout of what he had found out. All the troop movements that he had seen pointed towards the center of the city, towards where Jason had found the second company of Helljumpers, and towards where they knew the Covenant's prize must be.

"Did you manage to learn anything about what it might be?" Carris asked.

"Yes, I intercepted some transmissions and was able to translate them with the software installed for the original mission. Apparently this thing they've found is some sort of ancient artifact. It seems like it was buried under the center of the city."

"Do we know why it's important?" Jason asked.

"According to them it's a device that will enable near instant and much more accurate slipspace travel. This device could bring a rapid and bloody end to the war if they get their hands on it."

"That's really bad." Carris stated.

"We need to get moving." James agreed. With that, they got ready to head out. They had a long way to go, and they needed to get there as quickly as possible.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

 **1230 Hours, August 31, 2552 (Military Calendar)/Epsilon Eridani System, Unknown Building, planet Reach**

Jason did his best to act like nothing had happened between he and Carris now that James had returned from patrol. He was doing poorly by his own standards, but knew that given James and Carris's lack of ability to grasp social ques he was likely fine. As they prepared to leave he noticed Carris was acting more reserved around James, and resolved to instruct her on how to act more natural in the future.

Before they left, something occurred to Jason that prompted him to ask the Spartans a question.

"Hey, what does your heads-up-display look like?" James asked, curious as to the differences between his and theirs. He left out that he was more curious about the differences between their MJOLNIR and the Spartan IV's newer model armor.

"Here, I'll show you mine," Carris said, jumping up a little too enthusiastically for Jason's liking. She would need to be more discreet; he would have to bring it up with her sooner than he had anticipated.

She walked over to him and removed her helmet, handing it over to him. As he put it on, it synced with his armor and the display lit up with a wealth of information that was all familiar to him, but it was laid out differently than his own helmet.

Carris walked him through the different functions in the helmet, bringing up menus and screens that were remarkably similar to the second Generation MJOLNIR. It was slightly less intuitive, but she had had years to learn it. _And she probably picks up things like that faster than the average person._ The Spartan's helmet was also quite a bit heavier than his own, and his neck was strained just holding it up.

"Thank you for showing me that." He said, "It was interesting to see how it works."

"No problem," she said happily. "Could I try yours on? We haven't really had to use that much ODST tech."

"Sure," he said, "It's not quite standard though. It's an updated version of the armor that I'm field testing."

He walked her through the things she had shown him on hers, making sure to point out the shield that they had included in his recent armor upgrade. Both her and James were very interested in this, and took a great interest in how Jason's suit recharged itself.

"We should get going," James said after a while. "We need to hurry and stop the Covenant and get back to the rest of the UNSC."

Emmer looked at the two of them uneasily, not quite sure how well he would handle that when it came time to. It was only then that he remembered something he had spotted the night before.

"That's my rifle, how's it suiting you?" Jason asked James, pointing at the sniper rifle that he had found at Jason's drop pod.

"Oh was it?" James asked. "Here, by all means, you should use it! I'll take the shotgun you're carrying."

They made the exchange and Jason was glad to feel the weight of the rifle in his hands as they began working their way down the street towards the center of the city.

The roads were clear at first; Jason didn't see a single trace of the Covenant for the first five minutes of their walk. Then he started spotting signs of struggles, a small splash of red and blue on a wall, a few spent bullet casings here and there, the glint of an empty and discarded magazine shining from the shadow of a building. Mostly he saw signs of people that had been there before this siege had begun; a candy wrapper blowing across the street, a car parked on the side of the road, a little girl's pink teddy bear lying in the dirt blown off to the side of the road. Things he had never noticed before now were suddenly the only things that he could see.

He pulled up short, realizing that they had reached the alley that he had nearly died in the night before. He looked down it, seeing the bodies. He stepped towards them, quickly bending down and scooping up one of the overpowered plasma pistols that one of the Special Operation Sangheili troops had carried.

He strapped it to his lower back and headed back towards where the Spartans were waiting. It could prove useful in the confined spaces of a city.

"I need to get some things from my old room." He informed them as they came up on the entrance to his building.

"Okay, we'll go up too." James said. "They could have stationed a patrol up there on the off chance you came back? And in the condition that your shoulder is in, you may not have the strength to kill whatever's waiting for you."

"That's a good point, thank you." Jason said. They all headed for the front door to the building, climbing the stairs to the third floor once they were there.

"Sorry about the mess," Jason said as they approached the third floor. "I never had the chance to clean up after the incident."

"What are you…" Carris started, but she didn't finish before they came within view of the demolished room, "What happened here?"

They reached the debris in the hallway and Jason paused briefly, staring down at the elite that he had shot in the head. "I set up a trap using the body of a Grunt, and this squad discovered it while they were clearing the building. It was meant to provide me with an early warning system, but somehow it ignited the methane tanks of a couple other grunts who found it and…"

Jason gestured around him at the carnage.

"That's ingenious." James told him, "who would have thought to use a grenade as an improvised mine?"

"Sounds like something Mendez would've come up with." Carris suggested.

Jason didn't know who that was, and decided not to ask.

They left it at that, simply following Jason the rest of the way back to his room. When he reached the door, he stepped inside, seeing that the Elites had shoved the desk aside the night before. It was now lying on its side against the opposite wall. He sighed and stepped inside; quickly gathering the supplies he needed and packing his bag in the way he was accustomed to, so that he would be able to find them quickly if he needed to.

"Okay," Jason said. "Let's get going."

He walked over to the window and looked down at the car he had landed on. Despite the numbness in his shoulder, it still felt like the events of last night were a lifetime away; happening to a different person in a different time. Because there was no way that he had jumped out of a third story window and been lucky enough to land on a car, lucky enough to have been shot, but rescued by a pair of Spartans, lucky enough to have kissed one of them just this morning….

He let his thoughts wander as the three of them left the building and began their long walk towards the center of the city. He thought about the Company of Helljumpers that was waiting for them ahead, briefly noticing that his shoulder was starting to hurt again and thinking about the medical supplies they carried that would hopefully be enough to keep him patched up long enough to get medical care. Most of all though he was thinking about that kiss.

He wanted to do it again, but he didn't know when he would be able to or if he should. He sighed. He needed to focus.

Jason distracted himself with making sure that all his guns were loaded and ready to go while they walked. It wouldn't do to get into a fight and not have any ammo. They walked for a long time without seeing anything unusual. At least, they didn't see any covenant super weapons or giant alien structures that needed investigating; just a lot of empty streets.

Unfortunately the time came, just as Jason knew it would, when they reached the second Company of ODSTs.

"Do you know what happened here?" James asked. Jason suddenly remembered that he had only told Carris about what he'd found. He didn't have the strength to describe it again, and so in response, only held the memory chip that he had taken that had the recording of events.

James slotted it into his helmet and broadcasted the video to Carris and Jason, so that they were both able to watch it with him. Jason couldn't see their faces, but he could watch their body language and get a feel for their basic emotions. Carris showed the most.

He pulled up her biometric readout on his HUD and saw that she had a slightly elevated heart rate and was breathing a little bit faster than she should be at rest. It surprised him to see her reacting like this. Jason had thought that she would have been able to stomach this better with so many years of fighting under her belt. Then again, slaughter like that wasn't easy for anyone to watch. When the video had finished, James passed the chip back to Jason for safekeeping.

They retrieved the supplies that they needed from the troops; food, water, ammunition, and enough Biofoam to keep Jason patched up for a week. _I hope to God we're not stuck here that long._ He thought to himself.

They continued onward, closer and closer to the center of the city. So far they hadn't run into a single Covenant patrol; surprising since they seemed to own this city. They had been walking for roughly ten minutes past the other ODSTs, when they passed a road and saw something.

Jason snapped his rifle to his shoulder, aiming through the scope at the Wraiths parked there, but realized quickly that they were destroyed. He began to lower his rifle, but raised it again as an Elite ambled into view.

He opened a helmet link for James and Carris, allowing them to see what he saw without turning the corner and exposing themselves as well. Jason waited for several seconds before speaking quietly.

"Orders?" he whispered.

"Hold your fire until my go." James instructed him.

Jason waited, finger resting lightly on the trigger.

A green light blinked in Jason's HUD; a light typically used as an all clear indicator for the squad member, but in this case acting as a different indicator entirely.

He exhaled and gently squeezed the trigger. The round went exactly where he had needed it to go, and he waited to a count of three, finger still on the trigger, to make sure that no one would to come running. No one was.

The three of them quickly approached the Wraiths, and the sight that Jason saw was horrifying. He recognized them immediately as having been there for the death of his company.

"Shit." He whispered. He started to run. Alex could be somewhere over there. When he got there, his eyes skimmed over the scene and took it in. he couldn't make much sense of what he saw, but he recognized the helmet. It belonged to Alex.

He went over to it and picked it up. It was pretty heavily damaged, and Jason noted plasma scoring that had melted the section housing the memory chip. The inside was coated in a fairly significant amount of blood, as was the ground a few meters away. Too much for one person to lose. He tried to control himself and not let his emotions show, but knew that they could access his vitals. Though that didn't tell them much other than that he was upset. What did that tell them other than the fact that he must have personally known this man?

He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up to find Carris standing above him. She was looking down on him in concern; discernable only by the fact that she had touched him in public. Past that she was still presenting herself as a faceless soldier, ready to take on the whole Covenant Empire. He hated to leave it like this, but there was nothing he could do here.

"Okay," Jason said. "Let's go. We need to find whatever it is that the Covenant want, and find it fast. We don't have a lot of time to stop them."

"You're right," Carris agreed. "We need to get a move on."

As they turned to leave, Jason spotted the knife. It was buried partially beneath what looked like the remains of an Elite. He picked it up, and recognized that it belonged to Alex. It may have been standard issue, but Alex always kept his in perfect condition. There wasn't a single nick on the blade, and it was sharpened past what seemed possible. He took his out, leaving it on the ground and replacing it with Alex's.

They left the street, returning to their previous course. As they walked, he adjusted his weapons so that he could grab any one of the five with ease. His sniper was strapped across his back, his pistol rested on his thigh, the knife he had taken from Alex was in his sheath under his arm, and the plasma pistol he had acquired was strapped to his lower back. He carried his assault rifle.

"How much further do you think this dig site is?" Jason asked. He was feeling tired already, and didn't know how much further he could walk.

"No more than a couple Kilometers." James replied. "Do you need a rest?"

"Possibly," He replied, "I don't know if I'll be able to go much further today. It might be best for me to hole up somewhere once you find it. That way the two of you could do some reconnaissance without having to drag me along."

"How is your shoulder feeling?" Carris asked.

"I'm not sure. It looked like it was getting better earlier, but it's more painful now. I think it may be infected. It would explain how I feel. But if the need arises I can still operate on Overwatch with my Rifle."

"That would be appreciated. It's good to have someone watching your back." James commented.

Just as he finished saying this, something came into view.

They were approaching a large hole, many of the buildings around which had been demolished to make room for what appeared to be giant excavation machines. When they reached the last building that could be used to peer down into the center of the crater, they entered and began making their way to the roof.

Once they reached it they made their way to the edge; grateful that darkness had recently fallen over the city. It allowed them to see without being seen themselves.

"Wow." Jason said; all other words failing him. He'd never seen a structure quite like this before. It was massive, made of some gray metal he couldn't recognize, and most of all it was crawling with Covenant.

They gazed down on the building below; noticing the somehow gentle angles complimented by the sharp lines of the walls and sides. It was triangular in shape, jutting out of the perfectly excavated hole like a truck in the middle of an empty parking lot.

The exterior of the building appeared to have been meticulously cleaned, since it bore no stains from the deep layers of dirt that it had resided in up to this point. It looked to be composed of a smooth, non-reflective gray metal with lines running through it. It was easily the most graceful and beautiful structure that Jason had ever seen.

"So how do we destroy it?" he asked.

"That's a great question," James said.

"I don't know," Carris said. "We'll have to work that out somehow."

Jason gazed up at the SVD-class Heavy Corvette hovering silently above them. There was no way the number of troops they had down there were all part of a standard crew of the ship. This had to be a special force designed to recover this thing, and a ship that size would need the arsenal to match.

"I bet I know what we could destroy it with…" he started. They followed his line of sight upwards, to the monstrous ship overlooking the crater.

"Are you suggesting that we board the ship, take control of its weapons, and use it to destroy the construct?" Carris asked.

"Actually, my plan was a lot simpler than that." He said, "Why not just set it down and overload the reactor? The blast would surely be enough to level the whole city, structure included."

"That's true, but how would we get out?" James asked.

"The ship holds Phantoms right? We've seen them flying around the city. So we take them and go, before the ship's core overloads."

"There's a bigger problem than that." Carris said. "A blast that size within the atmosphere would cause problems across the planet."

"Hold on," James said. "I managed to patch into the Covenant's local communication network when I went out on patrol this morning, and they just lit up."

They watched him, knowing that his helmet's translation software was likely working on the intercepted transmission. After a few moments his head fell.

"They're announcing that the fleet has been destroyed, and the surviving ships have fled. The generators powering the orbital MACs have been overrun, and over a dozen Spartans have been reported to have been killed. They're beginning the glassing of the planet, but it sounds like they're saving this section for last; or at least until the artifact is retrieved."

"Shit." Jason whispered. "So what do we do?"

"Well," Carris said. "There's nothing left to destroy but this. There's no saving the rest of the planet now. That being said, overloading the reactor is a bit extreme. The ship's weapons should be more than enough to destroy the structure. Then we cripple the ship, take a Phantom, and leave."

"We could destroy it completely with the ships weapons." Jason agreed.

"That's doable." James agreed. "It wouldn't be that difficult either, the ship isn't more than a Kilometer long, and with most of its combat forces deployed across the city, it'll be practically empty on the inside."

"I guess it could work, but we should take some time to plan our assault."

"What can we plan?" James asked, "We have no idea what the interior of the ship looks like, so we can't go over details and maps. Besides, this is–."

Jason noticed James as he cut himself off, but chose not to press it.

James continued like it hadn't happened and gestured at the point where the gravlift met the ground. Supplies and materials were constantly being transported back and forth between the ship and the ground.

"Oh-Three-Hundred hours, we hit that point. As soon as we reach the top we split into teams. I'll make my way to the ship's engine room to plant a bomb, and you two make your way to the bridge and use the weapons to destroy the structure. We'll meet back up at the hangars and leave in a Phantom."

"Alright," Jason said. "I think that could work. Carris, do you have anything to add?"

"No," She said. "It sounds like a solid plan."

"Then we should find somewhere to hole up and get some rest. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow," Jason said.

They headed back to the stairwell, discovering now that the building seemed to house both apartments and offices. They found a small apartment towards the top with three beds. The Spartans chose to sleep on the floor anyway, which was probably smart since the beds would likely collapse under the weight of their armor.

Jason offered to help them remove the armor, but they insisted that they were more comfortable in it than out of it. When he thought about it, it made a certain sort of sense. Armor was like a second skin to you once you spent enough time in it. _They've had their armor for years now, training in it, fighting in it, sleeping in it, it might as well be their home._

He offered once more before they called it a night, but they continued to decline. He shrugged, noting as he did so that his wound was beginning to hurt considerably worse. Jason tried to put it out of his mind as he removed his armor and quickly fell asleep.


	10. Chapter 10

_**PLEASE READ:** A/N: Hello all! To all returning readers, I would like to apologize but I finally made up my mind to change the main character's name. He is now Jason Blackwell (last name is unchanged). Should be correct throughout. If you liked it better the other way, let me know and I'll change it back. Sorry if it's a bit confusing, but if you don't mind it then please bear with me!_

 **Chapter 10**

 **0300 Hours, September 1, 2552 (Military Calendar)/Epsilon Eridani System, Unknown Building, planet Reach**

They got up at three, just like James had said they would. _Somehow even though I knew this was coming I'm still not happy about it._ Jason thought to himself as he replaced his armor plates in silence. Once they were secure he initiated his helmet's startup sequence; watching the display indicators spring to life one by one on his HUD.

Last to boot up was his personal energy shield, which had fascinated him since he had received the upgrades for the armor. The quiet pop and sizzle of the air around him as it was instantaneously displaced by an invisible force made him feel nearly invincible. He looked around the room once he'd finished, not surprised to see that the two Spartans had already taken up posts at the window and door.

As he moved to go, something sprang into mind, and he deactivated his shield and popped the seals on his armor. He checked his shoulder, seeing that the wound wasn't looking good. Seeing it brought the pain to the forefront of his mind. He debated about popping a stim, or using more Biofoam, but thought that it would do more harm than good at this point. It hadn't helped yet, there was no reason to think it would start now. He fixed his armor and shield.

Jason picked up his rifle, looking at it for several seconds before strapping it to his back and choosing his assault rifle instead. The smaller profile of the weapon would allow him more freedom of movement, and would be slightly less audible if something went very wrong and he wound up having to use it before they reached the ship.

"I'm ready," he said.

They wasted no time in leaving the apartment, making their way down to the edge of the crater. They turned off all external lighting on their armor, not wanting to give away their position until they reached the lift. It was roughly two hundred meters from point to point, and the path looked clear.

The three of them made their way up to the base platform silently, taking cover behind large crates waiting to be carted off elsewhere.

"We should sneak up one by one." Jason suggested. "It looks like they're transferring artifacts up every time they send something down. I think they're stripping the building of valuables and tech."

"I agree. What are you suggesting?" Carris asked.

"It looks like they're about to send up another shipment," he said, "We could catch a ride up with it."

"That sounds feasible," James said. "You first."

Jason watched and waited until no one was looking, and then silently sprinted onto the raised platform. Once he was safely hidden behind a crate of artifacts, he flashed the all clear signal. One by one, he was joined by the two Spartans on the platform.

They hid there for several minutes, until the grunts were finished loading the platform with what Jason could only assume to be millions of Credits' worth of centuries old technology. Suddenly they began to rise and he felt his stomach sink to his feet. _Oh no, can they see us?_ He wondered, only just now realizing that they would be fully visible from the ground.

Luckily, the crew loading the gravlift at three AM seemed to be more inclined to slack off between loads than watch to make sure there was nothing wrong. It took them no more than thirty seconds to reach the loading bay and have the hatch slide silently shut beneath them.

Jason stepped out from behind a crate, moving around the edge just like he would do while clearing a building; weapon first and ready for anything. Dozens of possibilities flashed through his mind at the same time; Grunts, Jackals, Elites, Brutes, or even Hunters. Luckily, the room's only living occupants were three grunts that they quickly put down.

He looked around. They were in a large cavernous space, full of crates of artifacts, any one of which was likely worth more than he made in a lifetime. The room was lined in doors, but which was the right one?

"Which way should we go?" he asked.

"I would imagine that the bridge is more forward than this, but probably not by much. The Covenant don't use forward windows like our ships do. They typically use full wall view screens and the rooms themselves are more towards the middle. Since we're a little ways behind the middle, I would imagine that we only have a short ways to go." Carris said. "But we need to move fast, they'll notice the disruption in unloading soon."

Jason looked around, finding the door that led to the front of the ship. It was only then that he realized that James was nowhere to be found.

"Where's James?" he asked.

"He's on his way to disable the thrusters," Carris told him. "It's up to us to take out that structure." She started forward, moving at a light jog. _I hope she's not going slowly just so I can keep up._ Jason thought, knowing that that was likely the case.

They moved into a long hallway, and were surprised once again to find that it was empty. _What's going on here?_ Jason asked himself. _Surely there has to be someone on board._

It only took them two minutes to reach the bridge; Carris's estimate was correct, it wasn't far from the hold. They stacked up on either side of the door, glancing at each other for the count. A countdown popped up in Jason's HUD. A green light flashed, and they both turned inward at the same time, causing the door to slide open and admit them to the Bridge. Jason took it all in at a glance, creating a mental tally of enemies.

Eight Elites sat in front of consoles, ten Grunt Ultras were milling about, none facing them. Six Special Operations Elites stood in an Honor Guard formation on either side of a walkway leading to a chair in the middle of the room in which the Captain was sitting, directly in front of a large wall of monitors. The monitors showed the exterior of the ship, all linking together to form a nearly seamless picture.

No one so much as half turned in their direction; they were so assured in their safety. After all, who would suspect anything from being amiss this deep within their own ships?

Jason and Carris paused, staring at the strange sight before them. Never in their lives had they faced a room with twenty three Covenant soldiers in it and not been shooting. Jason set it off, lobbing two grenades into the cluster of Grunts. Carris tossed two more towards the Honor Guard. Jason was in the process of switching to his sniper rifle when the grenades went off.

It took a moment for the smoke to clear, and as soon as it did he put a round through the three surviving members of the Honor Guard, and was delighted to find that his two grenades had managed to dispatch all ten grunts without detonating their Methane packs. An explosion that size might have damaged equipment that they needed to use to destroy the structure.

"Fall back!" Carris yelled, retreating through the doorway. He was all too happy to oblige, retreating through the door just as the nine remaining inhabitants of the bridge were turning to face them. As the doors were swinging shut, he saw the Captain turning in his chair. He put the last bullet in his Magazine through the side of his head.

"Eight," He said as the doors slid shut.

"You know they're going to charge us, right?" Carris asked him.

"Yeah, that's what I would do if I were on the bridge crew. They probably have energy swords too. Allows for quicker, more precise kills in close quarters." He slid another magazine home, hearing the satisfying click as it notched into place. He sighed deeply as he racked the slide. "I don't like doing this, killing them I mean. It's just not right. We shouldn't be in this war, it's pointless."

"This isn't the time to get sentimental," Carris said. Just as she finished this thought, the bridge crew recovered from the shock of their initial attack and the door slid open. Jason pulled the trigger, more out of fear than reflex, and the first round sailed forward. It should have impacted mid-chest on the first unlucky Elite in line, but it didn't. Instead his bullet hit the soft pulsating orange tissue of the Hunter's midsection and passed through, damaging it, but not killing it.

The wounded Hunter issued a deep roar that seemed to shake Jason to his very core, then lowered his head and charged; bringing his spiked back panel raking across the floor towards him.

Jason was rooted to the spot. His body rigid, not knowing what to do. He had never fought a Hunter directly before, only ever with his Company. And then it had been a simple matter of waiting for the men with rockets to take care of them. Now, as he stood watching several tons of death hurdle towards him, he was amazed he could still think.

"Jason, move!" Carris screamed, fear evident in her voice. The sound of her voice spurred him into action. _She's in trouble, she has to be. Her voice wouldn't crack like that unless she was in danger._ He leapt to the side and pulled a grenade from his belt pouch. It was his last; he had to make it count.

The Hunter was dazed; he had hit the solid metal bulkhead head on, and it was obvious that it was having an effect on him. He was still leaning heavily on the wall, trying to recover. Jason primed the grenade and held it, waiting and counting. When he reached one and a half, he tossed the grenade underhand so that it rolled underneath the Hunter's shield and came to a stop. He turned towards Carris, and upon seeing her standing safely down the corridor a few meters from him, sighed in relief.

The grenade detonated. Jason felt ground up bits of organic material splatter against his back, and watched the fluorescent orange goo rain down around him. He turned back towards the door, placing himself between Carris and whatever might be rushing out to meet him. _They only hunt in twos,_ Jason thought, _so where's the other one?_

Just then the door slid open, and an Elite came scrambling out, running straight past Jason, and attempting to pass Carris. She put a single round through his head. A second one tried to run, but he tripped. _Why the hell are they running? I've never seen them panic like this._

The Elite had fallen flat on his face when he tried to turn the corner, and was scrambling to rise to his feet. Before he managed to, another giant figure lumbered out of the doorway, stepping on the back of the Elite as it did so. Jason was fairly certain he wasn't going to get back up.

The hunter ignored Jason for the time being, choosing instead to move to his fallen comrade.

. . .

Igada Yarsa Masu gazed down on the broken body of his bond brother, willing the orange blood to go away, for his body to reform, for him to stand. He gently prodded him with his shield, praying that he would wake up, get up and join him in the fight to kill the scum that plagued this ship. But he knew that this would not be the case.

He gazed upon the body of his brother for life one last time, and then let out a scream. He had screamed before, many times in fact. Often when he was truly enraged with something he would roar. Any noise that he made was caused by a vibration of the Lekgolo that he was made up of. When he screamed in anger, he used many of them, all vibrating rapidly to make a very loud noise.

But this scream was different. He felt it rise from deep within him, building up until he could feel every one of the tens of thousands of Lekgolo within him begin to vibrate as one. This scream he knew would be his loudest, his biggest, and perhaps even his last. There would be nothing left in him after this; he was going to die this day. Whether it was by his hand or the hand of the heretics that he now despised, he would die today in vengeance of his brother.

 _They killed the Captain, and now my bond brother, they must die._

. . .

Jason felt it. He felt the noise. He couldn't even hear it really, his armors audio dampeners popped into effect, shutting off all outside noise as soon as it happened, just like they would in an explosion. But nothing could stop him from feeling it.

It hit him harder than impacting the surface of a planet at just under lethal velocity, which he had plenty of experience with. It was like a wall of sadness and anger.

He stood, watching the Hunter scream. Jason was terrified. This was like facing a wounded animal. He knew that it would keep up the fight until it couldn't anymore. He didn't give it a chance to finish it's cry, emptying his sniper's magazine into the Hunter's midsection before switching to his assault rifle. He continued to pour rounds into it as he backed away, and as soon as he was out of Carris's line of fire she joined him.

As Jason reloaded, the Hunter fired, catching him squarely in the chest. He watched as his shield drained almost instantly to zero. He felt the heat of the blast wash over him as he leapt clear, somehow managing to avoid the majority of the attack. Jason kept firing, emptying two more magazines before he was satisfied that his opponent was dead. As soon as the Hunter fell, Jason sank to his knees, looking down at himself.

"Jason!" Carris yelled, rushing over to him. She crouched beside him, gently placing a hand on his back. "Are you alright?"

He quickly popped the seals on his armor and removed his helmet and chest plate; taking a look at them before reattaching them to himself. Despite the energy dispersing nature of the material they were made of, the plasma from the Hunter's blast had taken its toll. They were both too far compromised, and he would need to remember that they would be useless to him in an actual fight.

He stood, and accompanied Carris to the bridge. When the doors opened, they were met with a gruesome sight. The remaining bridge crew had gotten in the way of the second Hunter, and now lay broken and shattered on the floor.

He sighed and looked around at the available consoles. He spotted one that looked like it might control the weapons and made his way over to it.

Jason took a seat while Carris stood guard over the doorway. He wasn't the most technical person, but the controls for the weapons systems that he had sat down in front of seemed pretty similar to controls that he had seen being operated on UNSC ships.

"Can you operate it?" Carris asked him.

"Yeah, I think so. This looks like it operates several different weapons systems. Hopefully there isn't that big of a learning curve."

"Okay, hurry up; I don't know how much time we have."

He rested his hands on the controls, and managed to pull up a view of the ground below them. He could see the entire crater from where the camera was located on the bottom of the ship. He pushed a few buttons that looked like they might correlate to each other. Along the left side of the console, there were two columns of buttons that he could light up all at once by pressing them. _That must be activating specific weapons, and I would imagine that if they're all lit up, I'm controlling them all at the same time._

He found a small mouse pad type object, which seemed to control a targeting reticule. He rested it on the base of the Forerunner structure. A small button was flashing at him from the bottom right side of the keyboard. He pressed it.

Twelve Pulse Laser Turrets and ten Heavy Plasma Cannons charged up and fired at the structure simultaneously. The combined onslaught was much more effective than he had anticipated. Parts of the structure were melting and blowing off, the whole building becoming unstable. He gave it less than a minute until there was nothing left.

"Jason and Carris, what's your status?" James asked through the Comms.

"We're holding our own on the bridge, haven't seen any additional opposition. Where are you?"

"I'm in the hangar bay. There are two Phantoms left here. How much longer will you be?" James asked. Carris looked to Jason for an answer.

"If there are two left, then go ahead and take one and get to orbit. We won't be too far behind you." Jason answered.

"I'll see you there."

"How much longer until–," Carris began.

Something in the crater exploded, ending Carris's sentence abruptly. The detonation was fabulous. A ball of orange plasma rising towards the sky.

"That's going to hit the ship." Jason stated.

"Shit." Carris gasped. "Run!"

They left the Bridge at a sprint, running as fast as they could towards the upper hangar. They got about twenty meters down the hallway before it hit the rear of the ship, rocking it forward. They lost their footing and began sliding down the hall, in the opposite direction from where they wanted to go.

"Grab my hand!" Carris yelled. He managed to grasp it after a moment of flailing. He held tightly, their hands finding each other's forearms and holding on. Carris engaged the magnetic clamps on her boots, allowing her to seal her feet to the deck below them.

Now that they were attached to the floor, they weren't in risk of moving further away from the Hangar. Unfortunately, now Carris had to drag him back up an incline for nearly two hundred meters. It was extremely slow going.

He could feel the ship trying to correct itself, its gravitational stabilizers attempting to level it out. But with no one manning the ship's Bridge, it wasn't going well.

It took them almost three minutes to travel two hundred meters, but they finally made it to the Hangar. As the door slid open in front of them, they saw that there was still one Phantom left, and it was directly in front of them. Carris threw him into the hatch, which was only a few feet away. Jason climbed his way upwards to the pilot's seat, strapping himself in.

Carris joined him a moment later, strapping herself in the gunner's seat beside him.

Just as Jason moved to disengage the docking clamps there was another detonation from the rear of the ship, and suddenly they were weightless. Then his stomach sank, and he knew they were falling.

"What…" he started, but was cut short. The impact damaged the docking clamps, and after a moment they began to fall again.

They landed upside down, and the console in front of Jason lit up with warnings. He touched the controls experimentally, but got no feedback. _Shit. Now we're stuck down here._

"What happened?" He asked, finally able to finish his question.

"I think the explosion in the crater set off the bombs that James planted in the Engines." She replied.

"Great." Jason grumbled. He unstrapped himself, forgetting for a moment the position he was in, and promptly fell several feet onto his back. He rose to his feet and looked around the dimly lit cabin as Carris dropped out of her seat to land gracefully next to him.

They made their way out of the Phantom, and then across the hanger to the main doors, which were thankfully now resting at ground level.

Once they were out of the ship they looked around, scanning the street for hostiles; but they were alone.

"Well," Jason said, "I guess we're walking."


	11. Chapter 11

_A/N: Hello all, sorry it's taken so long for me to get another chapter up. Work has kept me super busy and I was caught up writing what I had thought was chapter 11 (was actually 12) that I forgot that this super short chapter needed to be added in. So I finished up 12 and wrote this, then typed it out (I write almost everything by hand). So sorry for the delay and sorry this is so short, but it should mean that I have 12 up very soon (fingers crossed for this weekend). Thanks for sticking with it!_

 **Chapter 11**

 **0834 Hours, September 1, 2552 (Military Calendar)/Epsilon Eridani System, Phantom Dropship, in orbit above Reach**

James sat back down in the pilot's seat of his commandeered Phantom with a nearly inaudible sigh. He had been pacing for the better part of half an hour, trying to come up with excuses for why they hadn't made the rendezvous yet. It had been over four hours since he had made orbit, and they should have been right behind him.

 _I'll give them another hour, then I'll head towards where the fighting in orbit was and see if I can contact and UNSC ships._ He popped the seals on his helmet and removed it, gently setting it down on the floor beside his seat.

As he began running through the control panel before him, he spotted a green blip on the radar heading his way. At the same time, something chirruped at him from the far side of the cabin. He ignored it for the moment, choosing instead to put his helmet back on. He would need to contact the ship and tell them not to open fire, as it would appear to them as if he was just another lost Covenant patrol ship.

After a brief moment of trying and failing to raise and UNSC ships in the area, he felt his stomach sink. _I was too preoccupied with the status of Jason and Carris to realize that I was looking at the wrong radar screen._

James threw himself at the controls, furiously attempting to distance himself from the Covenant Battleship that was bearing down on him.

He piloted the Phantom through a debris field, hoping that it would provide him with enough cover to escape. Unfortunately it was much smaller than he had thought, and the Battleship's shields enabled it to follow him through with ease. James ran to the airlock, cycling it as rapidly as possible.

The Covenant ship fired; a white hot streak of plasma racing towards the smaller vessel. As soon as it cycled James threw himself from the airlock, just as the plasma round impacted the ship.

It completely destroyed the Phantom, detonating it in a silent ball of light that caused James's visor to automatically darken. He was pelted with debris, and hoped more than anything that be blended in with the fragments of alien metal that floated alongside him.


	12. Chapter 12

_A/N: Well here you go, sorry it wasn't up by this weekend. Had to get some things sorted out unexpectedly. Not the longest of chapters but it'll do and I think it's decent enough to share with you all, so there you go. Please review and let me know what you think should be in it going forward. I have an idea of where I want to take it but I'm always willing to incorporate fan suggestions! Hope you enjoy!_

 **Chapter 12**

 **0412 Hours, September 1, 2552 (Military Calendar)/Epsilon Eridani System, Quezon, Planet Reach**

"Where to?" Jason asked. "We have no transportation, and long range Comms are still being jammed."

"I'm going to try and find a government access terminal. I should be able to use my security clearance to pull up plans for the city. From there we'll be able to find a way out." Carris told him.

"Well that looks like some sort of public office over there." Jason said, pointing to a very formal looking building.

"Let's go."

They ran over to the building, and upon finding the doors locked, broke in. Normally, Jason would have broken the glass and unlatched the door. Carris just removed the door entirely.

"That works too." He said, stepping over the twisted metal. They looked around.

"The receptionist's computer should work," Carris said. She crouched behind the desk and typed in her credentials. Jason saw unfamiliar symbols flash up on the screen, followed by what an unfamiliar interface. _Must be above my pay grade._

Carris quickly found the full electronic blueprints to the city and uploaded them to both their HUDs. She was about to log out, when Jason's helmet flashed a warning at him. _Missing data…_ he mused. _The updated systems must be picking up on something that someone wanted to hide._

"Hold on," he said, "Parts of this are missing. There's something here that was kept off the books, other than the artifact."

"Let me try something else…" Carris said. She logged out, and then began typing in someone else's credentials. "The person that started the Spartan II program, Dr. Halsey, gave us a username and password that corresponded to an old, unused official's account. Their clearance level is higher than most."

She re-uploaded the plans, and this time, Jason was able to see what had been hidden.

"Half of this city is built on top of what looks like a secret shipyard." He informed her.

"Well then we've found our way off planet," Carris said. She found a file on the base beneath them, pulling it up on screen. They skimmed over it quickly, looking for any details that might give them an idea as to what they might be walking into.

The file was very specific, and informed them that despite there being a completed ship, the base should be empty.

"It's strange that no one's there," Carris said. "They must be trying to keep the base a secret."

"Yeah," Jason agreed. "I wonder what kind of ship that is; it looks like it's experimental."

Carris worked at the computer for several more minutes, and finally managed to pull up specifications on the ship. It looked like a slightly larger variant of the Longsword. Upon reading the details on it though, they could tell that something else was happening, there was something different about it that they couldn't quite place.

"Damn," Jason said, realizing what he was looking at. "Fully slipspace capable and covered in active camouflage paneling. I think this is the next generation of spy ship."

"That would make sense given the location. You said it's slipspace capable?" Carris asked. "What's its maximum range?"

"It runs off of the same mini-reactors as your armor, so it should be able to get just able anywhere without needing to stop for gas. Handy for a recon ship."

"Perfect." Carris said. We should probably make use of the base's medical facilities before we go, no telling how long the trip will be in an experimental ship."

"Yeah," Jason agreed. "We can gather all the supplies that we need, and then leave as soon as we're ready."

"Let's get going then." Carris said. "The entrance is just a few blocks away. I went ahead and added both of us to the roster of people with full access."

"Alright," he replied, already walking out of the building.

Carris followed him out, logging out of the computer before catching up to him.

It only took them a few minutes to reach what appeared to be an office building. It too was locked, and Carris opened this door the same way.

They moved down the hallway, towards the waypoint marked in their HUD. They worked their way through several corridors and down multiple flights of stairs until they reached a level of the building with all concrete walls and steel doors that needed keys to open.

They kept walking, moving at as fast a pace as they dared, but fairly confident that they wouldn't run into anyone this far down in the building. The corridor that the stairs had emptied into ended, and they took a right, seeing on their map that this was the way to go. Through multiple twists and turns, moving deeper and deeper into the building, they came to a poorly lit hallway. Another fifty meters down that; there was an unmarked steel door with a handle and key lock. Carris removed it from its hinges. _We break a lot of things._ Jason thought to himself, remembering the other doors and the Covenant Battleship that now decorated the city's center.

Behind the plain metal door was another metal door, this one set several feet back into the concrete walls. Jason and Carris approached it, and a panel in the middle lit up as they drew nearer.

"Confirmed access." A computerized voice form the door spoke. "Jason Blackwell and Carris S-137 granted full security clearance."

The door swung inward, revealing that it was composed of several feet of Titanium Battleplate, much like the door of a safe would be. _They really don't want anyone getting in here do they?_ Jason mused to himself as they stepped inside a large, cavernous area.

They could see lights popping on across the facility, roughly a square kilometer and filled with machinery. It looked like any other dry dock Jason had ever seen.

"My god," Carris whispered, "we must be outside city limits."

The ship was front and center, all sharp lines and matte paneling. With space as a backdrop, it would be all but invisible to the naked eye.

They began to head across the large room that the door had opened up into, keeping an eye out for anything that they might be able to use.

They stuck to the edges, knowing that that was where they were most likely to find housing and barracks. The first thing they found was the medical wing, which was important but not immediately. They chose to continue their hunt for supplies before stopping to address their wounds.

"We should take as much as we can with us." Jason suggested. "I'm sure the UNSC would be happy to not lose as much as we can save."

They found crates of guns and ammo, as well as ammunition for the ship's weapons. They chose to get everything loaded up into the vessel's cargo area before continuing on.

"Still no people." Carris pointed out as they took a break after a particularly heavy crate of rifles.

"No, it seems like they completed construction and were waiting to deploy it, so they sent everyone home."

"I hope they made it out alright." She responded.

"I'm sure they did. Quezon had plenty of time to evacuate."

They finished with the loading of weapon, and moved onto the edibles. Mostly things in deep freeze or freeze dried that would be good for years if properly maintained. Food like that was always in demand with the ground troops and ship crews alike.

Finally they found the barracks, but discovered that they had been emptied out with the people that had likely stayed there.

"Here's something." Jason called out. He had stumbled upon a briefcase in what he could only assume was the chief engineer's room. It was locked with an old school key padlock, but a couple well-placed hits from the butt of his rifle popped the lock cleanly off.

"What is it?" Carris asked from the doorway. Jason was too busy counting to answer her at first.

"About half a billion in UEG treasury bonds. I'm sure they'll be glad to get their hands back on this." He informed her, snapping the case firmly shut and heading back towards the ship. "I think we've loaded up just about everything that's not nailed down, we should head back to the ship and get ready to take off."

"Agreed."

As they stepped out the doors to the barracks and headed towards the ship they saw that someone else had beaten them there.

Four men were standing at the bottom of the ramp, apparently waiting for them to return. All carried weapons, and wore armor that Jason was able to identify as belonging to Reach's general police force. Specifically the heavily armed response teams.

"How'd you find this place?" he asked. "Doesn't matter, I'm guessing you're here looking for a ride off planet? I'm sure you've been through hell to make it here."

"Office of Naval Intelligence, Section Three. I should be asking you how you found this place. You shouldn't be here."

Jason paused for a moment, considering what had been said and mentally reevaluating the situation he was in.

"Can we ignore that for the moment in the interest of self-preservation?" Carris asked, somehow having managed to sneak around behind them without their notice.

They turned and raised their weapons, but lowered them when they saw who it was behind them.

"Stand down, we're willing to overlook your presence here, but not his." The man who appeared to be in charge stated. He raised his gun, training it on Jason. Jason was suddenly reminded of the fact that his shields were permanently offline, and his helmet and chest plate were practically falling apart. They definitely wouldn't hold up to a burst of fire from the Battle Rifle in the man's hands.

"Surely there's no need for that is there?" He asked, slowly setting the briefcase on the ground. He would have reached for his own weapon, but suspected that doing so would get him shot before he could draw it.

Thankfully, Carris stepped in; planting herself between the men and Jason and enabling him to draw his sidearm unnoticed.

"Wait," Jason said before she spoke up in his defense. "Spartan Blackwell, hold your fire."

"I'm not a Spartan, and my name isn't Blackwell. I'm Bradley Reed, ONI section three." The man said, keeping his weapon raised. Carris froze for a moment, and then stepped aside to look at him and revealing him to the men once again. Jason held his pistol trained on the floor, and did his best to speak clearly.

"No sir, I am Spartan Blackwell, and I'm requesting that you lower your weapons."

"You're a Spartan and you didn't tell me?" Carris interjected. "But you aren't one of the S-twos."

"It was classified higher than you had the clearance for, and wasn't combat relevant. You were able to perform satisfactorily without that knowledge."

"It's still classified, and she's still not approved to know. Neither of you are supposed to be here."

Jason raised his weapon, but knew it wouldn't do him much good. Their armor was designed to protect against humans with ballistic weapons like his own, and he would either need something bigger or spectacular aim to deal any significant damage.

He began backing away slowly. The more distance he put between himself and them, the more likely they were to miss. He holstered his pistol and slipped his rifle off his shoulder. He wondered briefly why they hadn't opened fire yet, but quickly realized that they were afraid of Carris.

They had originally been assured of her loyalty, but that changed when she had defended him. The man in the forefront of the group glanced uneasily at her once more before speaking up.

"Spartan S-137, stand down now."

She remained silent, and Jason raised his weapon, training it on the leader. Carris followed suit, and then everyone moved at once.

Jason watched as the man he was targeting began to squeeze the trigger of his weapon, and Jason responded by sending a single round through his head before he could follow through on that action. Carris emptied her magazine into the two on the left, dropping them where they stood. Jason tracked the last man as he dove to the side and fired at Carris, and managed to take him down before he had lowered her shield.

"Are you alright?" He asked her as she ran over to him.

"I'm fine, but you're hit." She replied. He looked down and realized she was right. At some point one of them had managed to graze the side of his ribcage; punching through his essentially useless armor.

He popped the seals and tossed his chest and back plating aside, along with his helmet. It wasn't as bad as it had initially looked; almost entirely superficial. Carris was quick to help him apply a bandage. Once he was patched up, Jason made his way over to the men from ONI and began searching them for anything useful. All he found was the ignition key for the ship and codes for the hanger door.

"We need to go." He said, picking the briefcase back up and moving to the ship.

"But where?" Carris asked, following him. "We can't exactly fly ourselves to the UNSC in a ship that's supposed to be crewed by dead men."

"I know, but I think I know somewhere we can take it. Ever heard of Venezia?"

"Yes, it's basically a safe haven for terrorists and rebels, but ignored by the UEG in the interest of not fighting humans and Covenant at the same time."

"That's the place. It's also a safe haven for deserters that are sick of all the fighting. I know one. Decent enough guy, but he saw his family was in danger out near where the Covenant was operating and relocated them and himself to Venezia. Kept them safe when the Covenant eventually hit their planet."

"I'm not ready to desert. There's still a war on, and they're going to need all the help they can get."

"I agree, but we can go there and drop the ship off somewhere safe. I can get patched up, and we can figure out how to make our way to Earth while seeming like we came straight there from Reach." Jason suggested.

"Okay, then let's do that." She agreed.

They moved into the ship, and Jason stashed the briefcase full of bonds in the crew quarters before joining Carris on the bridge. It wasn't huge, but that just meant that the controls were all straightforward.

They managed to get the auto-pilot to set a course for Venezia, and found a way to remotely activate the sliding hatch in the roof of the cavern that was just large enough to squeeze the ship out of.

When they emerged from the dry docks they found themselves exiting the false roof of a phony warehouse on the outskirts of the city. They wasted no time in making it to Orbit, and from there beginning the jump to Venezia.


	13. Chapter 13

_A/N: Hello all, sorry about the delay in posting. I was dealing with summer job and starting up college again! Hopefully I'll be posting much more regularly now though. Made a small change to the last chapter (Added a name in at the very end. Kinda felt like it flowed better with it there). Hope you all enjoy this!_

 **Chapter 13**

 **1622 Hours, September 3, 2552 (Military Calendar)/Slipspace, in Transit to Venezia**

Jason sighed as he settled back down into the pilot's seat. He had just finished swapping out his bandages for the second time that day. Both his shoulder and his side were looking much better than they had been, and he was pleased to see that his body was working to fight the infections that had set in in those places.

As it stood they had less than twenty minutes left of their jump, and as far as he could tell they had everything in place that they needed.

"You're sure your friend will be there?" Carris asked nervously. In the last two days Jason had noticed that she'd become more anxious about the events surrounding their departure from Reach.

"Of course, last I checked he was still running his shipyard at the same coordinates. As soon as we drop out of slipspace I'll hail him on the comm frequency he gave us to stay in touch and we'll set up a landing at night when no one will see us.

"Alright."

Jason say back in his chair, readying himself for the transition back. If all went according to plan they would be emerging far enough out to avoid any sensors Venezia had deployed. He glanced at Carris again, noting her worried expression.

"Don't stress over it." He said. "Worst case scenario we turn tail back to Reach and figure something else out. Out armor is stowed away in the back; no one will know who we are."

This seemed to calm her a bit more. He was glad, because just as he finished speaking the console before him lit up indication that it was time.

They brought the ship out of slipspace without a hitch, and Jason was pleased to find them a little way outside the system. He fired up the main engines and set them on a course for the planet. He did a quick check and found that it was nearly dark near his friend's home, and began the process of hailing him on a secure channel.

After what seemed like an eternity, he answered.

"You've reached Shane's Shipyard; how can I help you today?" A man's voice answered.

"Shane, this is Jason, how are you?"

Jason, it's nice to finally hear from you! Just dropping by or are you looking to stay a while?"

"Just dropping by for now, but I have some cargo to store. You wouldn't happen to have a private hanger open would you? Preferably somewhere discreet and on the larger side?"

"Of course, how soon will you be needing it?"

"I should be able to land at your coordinates in three hours."

"Perfect, I'll have it ready and lit up for you. We'll catch up when you're planet side."

"See you then." Jason said, closing the channel.

"That went well." Carris remarked. She looked much more at ease now.

"I had told you it would. Shane and Jennifer are old friends. We go way back."

The next three hours were spent in relative silence, and they reached the planet without incident. Once at the coordinates, the ship's autopilot enabled them to make a smooth landing in the lit hanger that Jason presumed was for them.

They left their armor on board and, dressed only in their black bodysuits, made their way out to meet Shane.

"That's some serious cargo," he noted. "Anyone going to come looking for it?"

"No one should, and they'd have a hard time finding it if they did." Jason responded.

"Well then let's close up and get you two fed!" Shane said. He sealed up the hanger and indicated for them to follow him back to a small but well-furnished home a short walk away.

Carris seemed to be at a loss for what to say, and remained several steps behind Jason.

"Please, have a seat," Shane said, gesturing to several chairs that populated the living room. As he said this, Jennifer walked in.

"Ah, introductions!" Shane exclaimed. "Jason you already know her, but this is my wife Jennifer."

"My name is Carris, it's nice to meet you." Carris replied.

"When did you two get married?" Jason asked, surprised.

"April of last year!" Jennifer answered, "Are the two of you…"

"No, just fellow soldiers with some big cargo to drop off on our way back home."

"So the two of you are heading back? Are you stationed on Reach?" Shane asked.

An uncomfortable silence spread through the room.

"We're trying to get back to Earth actually; we're coming from Reach. I guess the news hasn't spread yet, but Reach is gone."

"Gone? How? That was the most well defended planet in the galaxy."

"They threw everything they had at it. We did too, but it wasn't enough. We were on the surface when it fell. Snagged that and made our way here. We're not done fighting yet, but we're hoping to have that to fall back on at some point."

"Well you can store it here as long as you need to, we won't charge you for it. I'm running the shipyard and Jen has a hardware store in town that sells everything from guns to hammers; so we're set as far as money is concerned."

Jason glanced at Carris, seeing her nod before speaking.

"If you're in the arms trade, then you can help yourself to the crates in the cargo hold. We picked up a little of everything."

"That's awfully kind of you." Jennifer said with a smile.

"I'll be sure to keep the ship fueled and stocked for you. Now, about getting back to Earth."

"What can you tell us?" Jason asked. "I'm sure you don't trade with them too often. How could we get there that wouldn't make it look like we came from here?"

"We trade with some people on New Carthage fairly regularly. We could get you on a ship going out in the morning and from there you could catch a ride to Earth."

"That would be amazing, thank you, thank you!" Carris chimed in.

"Of course, but in the meantime why don't you two rest? I think we have some clothes around here that would fit the two of you. We need to get you out of those suits so you don't stand out as much when you get there."

With more words of thanks, Jason and Carris followed Jennifer upstairs to the guest bedroom and quickly fell asleep.

. . .

"I'll be sure to check in when I feel it's safe." Jason informed Shane. "Thank you again for the clothes and help."

"And thank you for the guns. We'll be able to sell them by the end of the week. Feel free to ditch the cart wherever." Shane replied.

He was referring to the cart that was carrying Jason and Carris's armor, concealed in long black duffels stacked atop each other. In Jason's front pocket rested a treasury bond for ten thousand credits that he intended to swap out for a cash card as soon as they reached New Carthage.

He and Carris pushed the heavy cart up the ship's loading ramp, securing it in the cargo hold before making their way to the crew compartments. The pilots worked for Shane and Jennifer, and had been given explicit instructions to not ask for their names and forget they had been there. It was Jason's understanding that they were being paid a good bit extra for this particular task.

Moments after they had settled into their seats, they heard the engines began their warm up sequence.

"So have you given any thought to what we're going to tell ONI when we get there?" Carris asked Jason. "We can't exactly walk in the front door without a plan."

"I have actually. I thought we would tell them something close to the truth."

"Care to elaborate? It would help if our stories matched."

"We tell them that our Phantom was damaged and that the jammer was still up so we couldn't contact James. We worked our way through the city for a couple days and were able to hijack another Phantom off of a salvage crew that came through. Sound reasonable so far?"

"Yeah." Carris answered slowly, looking as if she was trying to commit his speech to memory.

"Right so we stole this Phantom and made it to orbit, but couldn't hail James or any UNSC personnel. So we set a course away from Reach to Circumstance hoping that the Covenant hadn't made it there yet. Phantom wasn't running at full power, and we made it there in about half a day. We hailed some ships fleeing the Covenant and managed to hitch a ride to New Carthage with them. From there we used the cash card I always keep on me to catch a ride on the first ship heading to Sol. How's that sound?"

"Feasible." Carris sighed after a moment's thought. "And I kinda like it other than the obvious lying to ONI part."

"Then it's settled. Now all that's left is to wait for our arrival." As he said this, Jason felt the not so subtle shift in the ship that indicated their jump into slipspace.

"Any suggestions on how to pass the time?" Carris asked him with a smile.

"Jason fought down his natural response to that question, knowing that there was no way she had meant it as he had heard it. Instead he tried thinking of a legitimate answer.

"I would suggest that we spar, but even with my augmentations I suspect I still wouldn't stand a chance." He offered. "Besides, I'm not sure there's enough space here for that."

"Never know unless you try. I'd love to spar with you sometime, you never know how it will turn out." Carris laughed. "Thought I think you may be right about the space issue. Any other ideas?"

 _There she foes with that damn smile again._ Jason thought to himself. Carris was attractive enough to begin with, but when she smiled it was practically debilitating. It rendered him temporarily mute, and he had to work to form proper sentences again.

"Well we have about twelve hours based on what they told us. Shane said the drives on this ship are the best they could find. That's about enough time for a nap." Jason said with a wink.

"You sure seem to sleep a lot." Carris commented.

"Picked that up during my stint as an ODST." He replied. "You're either eating, shooting, training, drinking, or napping. I don't have any food, there's no one to kill, not enough space to train, and no alcohol. The logical answer is to sleep."

"You could always do pushups." Carris suggested.

"You're right, we could." Jason agreed. "You think you can do more than I can?"

"Only one way to know for sure." Carris answered. She stood from her seat and dropped to the floor, assuming the proper position. Jason moved to the floor beside her.

They started at the same time and matched each other's pace; each counting in their head.

At 50, Jason was feeling confident; he wasn't feeling it yet, and was still keeping the pace they had set at the beginning. At 100, he was less confident; the fatigue was starting to creep into the muscles of his upper body, and he wondered if she was feeling the same. At 150 he knew he was going to lose, but was still determined to try. Shortly after 170 he found that his arms weren't responding properly and knew that anything more would be in such bad form that it wouldn't count as a pushup. Carris politely stopped at 200.

"That settles that then." Jason sighed exhaustedly.

"You made it much further than I was expecting. When you said you were a Spartan, were you augmented?"

"That's classified." He replied. "But yes. I'm part of the fourth generation of Spartans; hand-picked as the best of the best among the Marine Corps. I was asked if I was willing to volunteer for an experimental program to make me a better soldier and I accepted."

"I see. So you were given a choice?" Carris looked somewhat bothered by this.

"Yes. Augmentations began the next week. I'm not sure exactly what all they did, though I have a general idea. I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner. We were told that the program was to be kept classified for the time being."

"No, I understand. You made a food point back on Reach about it not being relevant at the time. I'm sure if you thought it would have made a difference then you would have said something."

"I would have. Now I have a question for you. Which one of us do you think can do more sit ups?"

"Oh me for sure." Carris laughed.

"Prove it."


	14. Chapter 14

_A/N: Hey! So I've just pretty much accepted that every time I sat I should be able to update soon I get hit with something else, so I'm not even going to promise that. What I CAN promise is that there's still plenty more of this story to come, and it's still being worked on! without further ado, here you go. Lot of dialogue this chapter, it's really been lacking in previous chapters._

 **Chapter 14**

 **1435 Hours, September 5, 2552 (Military Calendar)/New Carthage, Spaceport**

"Closest we can get is Mars. There's a luxury ship leaving tomorrow at 9. I figure from there we'll be safe to call into ONI." Jason informed Carris.

"What should we do until then?" She asked.

"I've bought us a hotel room for the night. We should stash our armor there and go shopping. It's going to take the ship about six days to get to Mars, we'll need more than one set of clothes."

"I agree. Any trouble getting the bond exchanged?"

"None at all, and after the tickets and hotel we still have about two thousand left. So, want to go shopping?"

They left the card and duffel bags of armor in the rented room and headed out to buy clothes and food.

"None of these clothes are particularly practical." Carris commented upon seeing the selection offered by the shop Jason had led her to.

"Very few places outside military installations offer practical clothing. I think this would look good on you." Jason said, holding out a long floral dress. On anyone else it would have been ankle length, but thanks to Carris's height he suspected it would be worn more like a sundress.

"Do you really?" She asked in surprise. "I suppose I'll get it then."

They picked out several more outfits before leaving and grabbing a bite to eat. After that they retired to their room for the night.

In the morning they got up early, packed their newly acquired clothing into the topmost duffels, and set out for the spaceport that their ship would be departing from.

Jason and Carris were able to board without incident, and thanks to a tired security guard managed to get their bags onto the ship without being searched. _I'm glad, I don't know how they would have reacted to a military presence out here._

Though the insurrection hadn't been as big of a problem since the arrival of the Covenant, there were still those that harbored quite the grudge against the UEG.

"Not that big of a room," Carris stated when they arrived. "For what we paid I would have expected a little more."

"Yeah, I had hoped it would be bigger, but on a ship this expensive this was about what I expected. Shame about the beds though."

Though he had thought he was renting a room with two beds, the room they were led to contained only a single large bed. Jason was going to argue the point but was told that the ship was booked full and if he didn't like it he could find another ship heading to Sol.

"It shouldn't be a problem, I'm sure we can both fit on it." Carris assured him.

Jason was reminded once again of the difference in their upbringing and life experiences and made up his mind not to say anything about it for now.

"I'm a bit sweaty after pushing that cart across town to get to the port. I'm going to shower and look around the ship some. Would you like to come with me?" Jason suggested.

"Sure, I'll shower after you and we can tour the important areas." Carris agreed.

Jason showered quickly, wanting to see the place they'd be spending the next week. From what he had read tickets included food and entertainment, but he had no idea what that consisted of.

He wrapped himself in a towel and stepped back into the bedroom to find clothes while Carris showered. He wasn't exactly shy about changing in front of her, as the military didn't tend to have private showers or changing rooms. Especially now that he didn't to need to hide the telltale scars that had come from his transition into becoming a Spartan.

After her shower Carris did the same and Jason realized that this was the first time he had seen more than her hands and face. Back on Reach she had always been wearing at least a bodysuit, and the clothes Jennifer had provided her with were pants and a long sleeved shirt. Now that she was just in a much too small towel she was even more attractive than he had thought.

He also noticed her scars. Faint though they may have been, they covered her arms and legs. He wanted to ask, but couldn't find the words. As she dropped her towel to change, he saw that the scars weren't limited to her extremities, but were spread across her entire body. Many of them looked like they had come from the augmentation process, but she had far more than he did. He also realized he had been staring for far too long and tore his eyes away from her.

"You look like you have a question." Carris said.

Jason felt his face and neck turn red. _I can't believe she caught me staring at her again._

"I did. I… Was wondering about your scars. How did you get them?" He asked hesitantly.

"They're remnants of our augmentation process. I'm guessing it wasn't as refined as yours. I'm not sure about all the details, but I know the scars were pretty bad initially. They've faded quite a bit." She answered honestly. "You don't think they'll be a problem do you?"

 _They'd be pretty hard to miss, but between her height and how pale she is I doubt they'll be what most people notice first._ Besides, they wouldn't be a problem unless someone knew what they were from, and anyone that knew that shouldn't pose a threat to them.

"They shouldn't be." He assured her with a smile.

"That's good. I was looking forward to wearing that dress you picked out." She grinned.

Jason was surprised she was so excited about wearing it, and he wondered if it was the dress or his opinion on it that she liked more.

"You have a few scars yourself you know." Carris added playfully, placing her hands on her hips. "Alright, that's enough staring for now; I'm going to get dressed."

Only then did Jason realize that she was still naked. He thought about her seemingly intentionally playful joke for a moment before spotting a long burn scar stretching from her waist to just under her arm on her left side.

"Where did you get that one?" he asked. She stopped short of putting her dress on as he rose from the bed and approached her, gently running his fingers across the scar to indicate which one he was talking about.

"That one is older. We were sent to take out an insurrectionist base a little before we got our real armor. We must have been spotted on the way in, because my squad was ambushed when we got there and someone lobbed an incendiary grenade at us. It went off right next to me and caught my uniform on fire. I didn't notice until I took out the woman that threw it, and by then I was pretty badly burned. We're lucky we didn't lose anyone that day." She answered. Jason found himself still carefully touching her side, as if the scar would still bother her all these years later. He quickly removed his hand and stepped back, allowing her to pull the dress over her head and finish getting dressed.

Carris looked stunning.

"How do I look?" She asked him.

"Amazing. That dress really suits you." He assured her honestly.

"You know," she began, "I told you about one of my scars, it's only fair if I get to ask about one of yours."

"Of course, ask away." He agreed.

She stepped up to him and turned him around.

"That scar on your shoulder, here," she said, indicating the point with a soft touch of a finger, "where did it come from?"

"That one I earned in a bar fight a few years ago." He answered. "Apparently me and my buddy offended this one guy, so he smashed a bottle on my friend and stabbed me with it. He fought pretty decent for how drunk he was. Admittedly it probably helped him that I had half a bottle sticking out of my back and Alex was sporting a concussion."

"That's terrible," Carris said, "what happened to him?"

"Well the bartender was a friend of ours and he vouched for us. I think he went to jail for the night to sober up. May have needed to stop by the doctor first though, I seem to recall hitting him pretty hard with a chair."

"It sounds like it was deserved." Carris laughed.

"Well I do try and avoid hitting people that don't deserve it." Jason replied with a smile, "You ready to take a look around?"

"Yeah!" Carris exclaimed excitedly.

They left their room and headed towards the center of the ship where the dining and entertainment would be located. It was packed full of people trying to eat or see a movie, but they managed to grab a couple trays full of food and find a table.

Jason took his time earing, but Carris quickly worked her way through the meal and looked around; patiently waiting for him to finish.

"What else would you like to do?" he asked once he was done.

"There's a movie that starts in five minutes, could we go see that?"

"Of course." He replied.

As they took their seats towards the back of the theatre, it occurred to Jason that this was an awful lot like a date. _It's going to be an interesting week._ He mused.

. . .

The week flew by faster than Jason would have liked. At first, spending time with Carris had felt slightly awkward; as if he always needed to be on edge. But it gradually got easier and came more naturally, and even sleeping in the same bed no longer felt strange to him. He learned a lot about her, and in turn told her quite a bit about himself.

"I've enjoyed getting to know you this week." Jason told Carris as they packed their clothes away for landing.

"So have I. I don't think I've ever had a chance to just enjoy myself, so thank you for that."

"Hey, mental health days are important every now and then. I'm just trying to help you make up for all the ones you've skipped over the years."

"Either way, thank you." She reiterated, moving towards him.

Jason turned towards her fully and was caught off guard when she embraced him. He quickly reciprocated, returning her show of gratitude.

"And thank you for sticking by me through all of this." Jason said.

"Don't mention it," Carris smiled and stepped back, "We're a team. We'll always have each other's backs."

They finished loading everything up onto the hand cart and sat down; waiting for the announcement that they had landed. When it came, they pushed the cart to the loading ramp and off of the ship.

Jason consulted a map, and they set off towards the nearest ONI office. Thankfully it was only a short way away, and with both of them pushing they got there within an hour.

"You ready?" Jason asked as they approached the front doors.

"Yeah."

"Remember the story?"

"Of course."

"Good. Well with any luck I'll see you again soon," Jason said. He didn't need to add that without that luck they would likely be court marshalled and executed for treason. "But until then it's been a pleasure working with you."

"Same goes for you." Carris replied, extending her hand to shake.

They shook hands, and with a deep breath walked into the building together.

There was someone standing just inside the doors waiting for them. _They've probably been tracking us since I booked the passage on the ship to come here. I used our real names._

"Someone will be here shortly to collect you both for debriefing." The young woman standing before them said. "If you'll follow me, I'll take you to the roof where they'll meet us."

They took an elevator up, and didn't have to wait long before seeing a pelican dropship heading their way. When it landed, the back ramp was lowered and a balding man in a well fitted suit stepped out.

"You two have some explaining to do." He informed them. "Please follow me."

 _A/N 2: Well there it is! Hope you all liked it, if you have any ideas you would like to see implemented let me know and I'll do my best to incorporate them! If you have complaints, please review and let me know what they are._


	15. Chapter 15

_A/N: So... Hey. I haven't updated since October, and I'm sorry about that. School kinda took off, and A web series I enjoy, RWBY, began it's fourth season and I've kinda been obsessively reading fanfiction related to that. (I've kept track, I've read 2,142,527 words of RWBY fanfiction since October. It's a bit of an obsession.)_

 _But you probably don't care about that. This is a Halo Story after all, so onto that. This is a relatively short chapter, kinda introducing the new gang. I've hit a bit of a hiccup after the next chapter, which is that I'm once again dissatisfied with where the story is going. Luckily this time I'm realizing it before I write those sections, and not a couple dozen chapters after the fact. So there might be a bit of a hiatus as I refocus on where I want this to go. If you have any input or suggestions, please feel free to leave a reply or PM me and I'll take it into consideration. After all, I'm writing this for you all to read, so why not get advice from you all?_

 _Anyhow if you've read all that crap above congrats. During hiatus I might start a RWBY story (possibly a Halo crossover) so keep an eye out for that if that's your thing. If not then don't. With that said, Chapter fifteen:_

 **Chapter 15**

 **2155 Hours, September 12, 2552 (Military Calendar)/Mars, Interrogation Room, Bravo Site**

"And then we made our way to the ONI office on Mars and now I'm here." Jason finished, sitting back in his chair. He took a sip of the coffee they had provided him with.

"So tell me again how Spartan 137 came to find out about the Spartan IV program. A program that you were under strict orders not to reveal." The man in the black suit instructed him.

"As I said before sir, it was a slip of the tongue when talking to Spartans Carris and James."

"And let's talk about Spartan 005. The last time we heard from him he had gone MIA during a battle in orbit above the planet. Do you know how he got planetside, and why did you not attempt to contact him after taking down the Covenant ship?"

"He never went into detail on that," Jason responded, getting frustrated. "And we did, but comms were still being jammed and once we made it to orbit the window he was supposed to wait had long since passed and we were unable to reach him. Look sir, may I speak freely?"

The man nodded for him to continue.

"I've told my side of the story. You can fact check it as much as you want, but at some point you're going to have to take what I've said at face value. My story won't change, because it's exactly what happened, and anything further is a waste of time for both of us.

"That being said," Jason continued, "I would like to be permanently assigned to a team of Spartans, and I'd like to request that Carris be a part of it. She already had knowledge of the Spartan IV program, and we work well together."

The man across from him studied him for a moment, as if trying to validate what had been said. After what seemed like an eternity, he stood.

"Very well Spartan Blackwell. Both of your stories match, and as far as we can tell are accurate. I believe you. You'll be assigned to a squad shortly, and I'll see what I can do to get her on it. You did well to complete your mission."

"What about James?" Jason asked.

"Spartan 005 has yet to contact USNC or ONI since he was declared MIA above Reach on August 30th. Search parties will likely be sent out soon. However, you'll be pleased to know that Alexander Cohen was picked up on Reach and brought back to Earth for urgent medical attention. He has nearly fully recovered and will be placed with you as well."

"Wait, Alex is alive? But how? I found his helmet."

"One of our operatives was passing through the area and found him. He used his ship to get him to orbit and stabilized before continuing his mission. Unfortunately, the operative in question, Mr. Reed, hasn't been heard from since, so you won't be able to ask him about the exact circumstances surrounding the rescue."

"I see." Jason said. His mind flashed back to the hanger they'd found the ship in. _The man had introduced himself as Bradley Reed. And I killed him._ He did his best to avoid thinking about it. What mattered was that Alex was alive. "When can I see him?"

"He's being treated by medical professionals at Bravo Site, Alpha Site's section three counterpart here on Mars.

"Your personal belongings will be returned, but your armor will be collected for processing and recycling. Those parts aren't cheap you know. Is there anything you need me to make sure gets returned?"

"Yes, the knife. It's a personal item," Jason informed him. "When can I see Alex?"

"If you'll follow me we'll head there now."

The man sitting before Carris listened intently as she gave her account of the events that had transpired; rarely interrupting her with questions. _It's like I'm above suspicion. Because f who I am they don't suspect me of being dishonest._ She felt a little bad about what she was doing, though she knew she would feel worse had she not defended Jason back in the hanger.

"Very well," the man said once she had finished. "I'm going to speak with Blackwell now. Please wait for us outside his debriefing room."

"Sir, what about Spartan 005?" Carris asked. "Has he reported in yet?"

"No. We've heard nothing from him, and he's currently listed MIA. Will that be all?"

"Yes sir." Carris stood and followed the man to the next room over, where she waited for what seemed like an eternity.

Eventually the door opened and she fell in behind the man and Jason as they headed towards the elevators.

"ONI will of course be reimbursing you for all travel expenses." He informed Jason. "Though in the future it would be appreciated if your lodging was chosen more economically."

"Thank you, sir." Jason replied.

"Just so we're all on the same page; you're both being reassigned to a squad together along with two more Spartan IVs. We're heading to meet the third of four members of what will be fireteam Juniper. You'll be issued the latest generation of MJOLNIR and allowed to train together as a team for a week to get a feel for each other's capabilities. Understood?"

"Yes sir," Carris and Jason replied in unison.

 _That turned out better than expected._ Carris mused. Not only would she be able to continue serving, but she got to continue serving with Jason.

Jason stepped into the well-lit room; his eyes immediately landing on its sole occupant.

Alex looked fine. He was sitting up in one of four well-built beds in the barracks that they were assigned to. As soon as they entered the room, Alex looked up from whatever he was reading on his datapad and locked eyes with Jason.

After several seconds of silence, Alex sprung up from the bed and walked over to Jason, embracing him. Jason readily hugged him back.

"I thought you were dead," Jason said after a moment.

"So did I for a while there. From what I've been told I was out when they found me. They put me on ice right away, and I didn't come to until they pulled me out of cryo and patched me up back here. How did you get out? What happened after, well…"

"After we got separated," Jason finished for him. Slightly bending the facts. "I pushed towards the Covenant ship for a few days until I was ambushed. Then a couple S-IIs found me and we managed to finished the mission. We got split up and the two of us made our way back here."

Alex seemed to notice Carris for the first time once Jason was finished.

"I'm Alex," he informed her.

"Carris," she replied. "I suppose we'll all be working together now."

"Yeah," Jason said. "What happened with you?"

"I found the wraiths and took them on."

"Yeah, I found your helmet, and this." Jason added, holding out Alex's reclaimed knife.

Alex accepted it with a smile, inspecting it for damage before handing Jason the one in his sheath and placing his blade where it belonged.

Carris watched them interact with greatly piqued interest as the two of them caught up. _So, this was who Jason was so upset over. I can see why, they must be very close._

They talked like they had known each other for all their lives. Indeed, despite having been introduced it seemed as though they had forgotten about Carris for the time being. Not that she was complaining. She was using the time to nearly fold and put away the civilian clothes that she had gotten with Jason. Apparently, they had deemed them important enough to return to her.

"You alright Carris?" Jason asked. "You look a little lost."

"I'm fine." She assured him. "I've just never really had anything like this before. That was mine, I mean."

"Oh, I see," Jason looked a little lost for words, and so transitioned back to talking with Alex.

Carris spied movement in the doorway, and glanced up to see who it was. A bit shorter than Carris, though that wasn't saying much, as most people were. She was wearing a standard issue bodysuit that did little to conceal her figure, and had a blonde pixie cut that it looked like she had recently cut. Her eyes scanned the room, taking the three of them in as if she was sizing them up. She gave an almost imperceptible nod before speaking.

"Hey there, I take it this is fireteam Juniper?" She asked.

"That's right," Alex spoke up, "I'm Alex, this is Jason, and Carris. And who might you be?"

"Eli Volhov, your newest squad member. Who's in charge here?"

"That'd be me." Jason said, asserting himself as squad leader. Carris didn't see Alex objecting, and didn't have any objections to voice herself, and so kept quiet about the lack of formal decision.

Eli nodded, facing him and snapping to attention.

"Orders sir?" She requested.

Jason gave a short laugh. "At ease. It's late, we're all tired. Relax and get some rest."

Eli nodded, visibly relaxing. She walked over and tossed her things onto the bunk next to Carris's. Once Jason had moved back to his conversation with Alex, Carris noted Eli look Jason up and down, as if sizing him up. Carris suddenly felt odd. Almost, _threatened?_ Carris realized. _Why is she threatening to me?_

"What's your skillset?" Alex asked Eli, disrupting Carris's train of thought.

"Close quarters mostly. I grew to love it as a Helljumper and wound up specializing as a Spartan."

"Noted. It'll be good to have someone like that on the team. Alex and I prefer rifles, and Carris is a jack-of-all-trades." Jason replied.

That was true. It was common for Spartans to specialize in one skill, but she had been proficient in nearly everything. _I may not be the best in my class, but I'm probably the most well rounded._

"I tend to stick with medium ranged weapons." Carris added. "Though obviously, I can work with whatever is needed to get the job done."

Carris had finished packing away her things and noted that Eli hadn't bothered.

"Not going to unpack?" Alex asked her with apparent interest.

"Not after the day I've had. I'll do it in the morning."

With that she rolled over and passed out on top of the sheets. Carris checked the time and only then realized how late it was.

"Well start training together tomorrow," Jason said, "Until then let's all get some well-earned sleep."


End file.
